#commission studio

For the 2017 Venice Art Biennale, visual artist Xavier Veilhan was given opportunity to transform the historical exhibition’s French pavilion and alongside curators Christian Marclay and Lionel Bovier, he reworked the space into Studio Venezia, an immersive installation inspired by Kurt Schwitters Merzbau, as well as the experiments of the Black Mountain College and Doug Aitken’s nomadic happening, Station to Station. The result is a sculptured structure where unfamiliar wooden geometries bend, collide, and refract around a fully functioning recording studio, one replete with piano, clavinet, modular synthesis, Buchla, vibraphone, percussion, and more exotic instruments such as sound sculptures from the Association Structures Sonores Baschet. During the Biennale, the space hosted many musicians, allowing them free reign and full ownership of anything produced while also inviting in visitors to experience not only the incredible constructions of the space, but also real-time musical creation and the inner workings of a professional studio. Among the musicians asked to participate were frequent collaborators Gigi Masin and Jonny Nash, a duo whose deep artistic connection has been explored across Clouds and The Distance, two albums made in conjunction with Young Marco as Gaussian Curve. Within Veilhan’s studio-sculpture, Masin and Nash primarily stuck to the instruments of their souls, with the former on piano and the latter on guitar. And at times, Baschet sourced drones, plucked string vibrations, and dreamy mallet instrumentation made their way into the duo’s improvisations.

In 2018, Nash was approached by design agency Commission to collaborate on a vinyl LP, which led to him editing down the Venice recordings into Postcards from Nowhere for eventual release on Melody as Truth. Musically, two interconnected minds work together through realms of ambient jazz, pastoral psychedelia, minimalist shimmer, and idiophonic noir and though Nash’s recent work has seen his guitar spread ever further out into esoteric fourth world experimentation, there are times here where the playing erupts into classical space rock majesty, with touches of the HIllage, Gilmour, Rother, and Göttsching-indebted echoguitar brilliance found on Land of Light, Phantom Actors, and Exit Strategies. And just as Veilhan’s installation was an interdisciplinary experience, so is Postcards from Nowhere, which surrounds the music with photography from Luke Evans and the printwork of Paris-based atelier Imprimerie du Marais. It’s an incredible visual presentation, as Evans’ floral photographs appear as if melted onto the record sleeve, with the folds and distortions of the image sticking out three dimensionally. The inner sleeve features a white on white variant of the melting photograph technique as well as an embossing of the project’s mission statement…all on textured cotton paper…and going even further, the liner notes have been hot foil printed around the edge of the album, the interior of the outer jacket is fluorescent pink, and the whole thing comes in a jet black mailer sourced from recycled coffee cups and embossed with the same collaborative mission statement found on the inner sleeve.

Gigi Masin & Jonny Nash - Postcards from Nowhere (Melody as Truth, 2019) Swells like wisps of wind begin “Butterfly’s Tale,” with Nash’s blurred guitar impressionisms interspersed with scattered picking sounds and crystalline echowaves. Masin’s bucolic piano meaderings touch upon pastoral jazz and warming new age, as atonal chord clusters drift into pearlescent strands. It’s cozy and inviting, evoking the titular butterfly as it flits flower to flower under a bright summer sun. At the other end of the A-side sits “Astro,” which features mallet instruments drifting like leaves on a stream and accompanied by the otherworldly Baschet creations. Clattering noises flow in the background, all shuffles, scrapes, steps leading nowhere, and unidentifiable string plucks that could be some one playing the piano’s interior, or perhaps some strange instrument built into the very body of Xavier Veilhan’s immersive creation. The sculptural instruments and their metallic structures bend, waver, and sing like ghosts as everything drifts within a dopamine dreamscape and contemplative silences are just as important to the song as the barely defined melodic development. Towards the end, resonances grow in strength and a vibraphone dances through shadowy noir motions as bowed arcs of feedback generated from strange pieces of metal wrap around unidentifiable percussive detritus.

Between “Butteryfly’s Tale” and “Astro” sits the epic “Interstellar”, where Masin establishes a three note bass riff on piano while slowly working in spiraling leads and waterfalls cascades. It’s ambient bebop floating on clouds, with Nash slowly evolving from scraped textures and metallic shimmer into bluesy space psychedelia. As the dreamy piano patterns hold down a semblance of a groove, ivory keys and steel strings explore the cosmos, with the whole thing evoking nothing so much as the breathtaking interplay between Daniel Fichelscher and Florian Fricke in Popol Vuh. Masin alternates between gentle chord strokes and majestic runs that stretch the full length of the keyboard and Nash’s guitar is smothered in slapback echo, with notes moving like beads of light on turbulent waters, growing louder…more intense…even chaotic at times…as the delay and fast motion picking creating fractal structures. At some point it all seems to vaporize, leaving just the three note piano refrain to sit below Nash’s guitar, which is now reduced to a fragile whisper. Footsteps, breaths, and creaking stools are heard amidst the hushed ambiance and there’s a feeling of intimate immersion…like being right next to Masin and Nash as they improvise together through outerspace dreamworlds. And later, Nash switches to e-bow, with infinite sustain and blissed out saturation joining soloing piano for a slow burn float towards the center of the cosmos. 

The centerpiece of the B-side is “Girl With No Name,” starting with guitar curlicues and piano dancing through the shadows. Layers of feedback and droning resonance drift like a dark fog as Masin moves up high, with his notes twinkling like starlight. Sometimes guitar and piano drift apart, as chords and solos flow out in all directions only to merge again. Other times the two play off of one another in spiritual synchronization, with Masin spontaneously alighting on some heavenly journey only to be miraculously tracked by Nash, or with Nash erupting into spiraling solo magic as Masin backs down into a supportive chordscape. Near the middle, the piano drifts into a breathtakingly beautiful progression and it all seems destined for some majestic climax as the heart is swept towards paradise skies. But it never arrives, for the duo simmer instead into near silence. Masin disappears completely while Nash uses his lower strings to wander through ethereal desert landscapes, with bass drones and subsonic resonances floating in the depths. When Masin returns, his piano is locked into pure minimalist magic while generating shimmering tapestries of ivory incandescence…like an infinitely oscillating web of jewels. Eventually, Nash also joins the gemstone weavings, creating thrilling moments where guitar and piano blur into indistinction…as if the mix is completely subsumed by pulsating echo bursts and prismatic celestial vibrations.

Surrounding “Girl With No Name” are “The Sea in Your Eyes” and “Postcards from Nowhere,” with the former reveling in the kind of oceanic piano dreamscapes that could only come from Masin. Imagine moonlight rippling against the gentle motions of a paradise lagoon while the heart floats forever at peace…a serene environment into which Nash’s guitar fades, shambling at first, with moments of improvisational strangeness as six-string clusters and piano leads overlap. But before long, their playing develops into a bewitching conversation, with Masin’s chords reasserting the flow as Nash alights on gorgeous and glassy solo adventures…perhaps the closest the duo come here to the meditative balearica of Gaussian Curve. Then in “Postcards from Nowhere,” there is further e-bow, though at first vaporous and distant. Much of the album has seen the guitar foregrounded, but here Masin takes over, with his piano closed mic’d and warm as bass waves and high notes sing towards the sun. Natural distortions blur the edges of everything and strange scrapes and pulses float in the background as atonal string vibrations evoke tamburas from an alien planet. Nash sometimes fades away completely, only to re-emerge on a shooting start of gently sustaining bliss. And his playing grows in volume as the song progresses, eventually breaking free of the shadows to bathe in the light alongside Masin’s spiritual piano ambiance.