Pillars and Tongues
NEWS
- 06/10/2015
Serpentine : création ambient, arts numériques (Chicago/Nantes)
En plein cœur de la capitale de l’Illinois, ville énorme et bruyante, Serpentine capte les sons (feux d’artifices, sirènes, brouhaha de rues) pour les transformer au travers de pédales analogiques. L’écriture de ces pièces instrumentales oscille entre lenteur, harmonie réverbérée et expérimentation noise. Serpentine s’est produit une fois, le 21 juillet 2014, lors d’une Ambient
- 16/12/2014
LABEL XMAS SALE / PROMO DE NOËL
20% SUR TOUT NOTRE SHOP PENDANT 1 MOIS ! * 20% DISCOUNT ON THE WHOLE CATALOG UNTIL JANUARY 15th ! * ~ ENTER CODE XMASSALE ON OUR BIGCARTEL ~ CATALOGUE (MM011) Powerdove ‘Arrest’ (LP/CD) (MM010) Pillars and Tongues ‘End Dances’ (LP/CD) (MM009) Ramona Córdova ‘Quinn To New Relationship’s (LP/CD) (MM008) Ramona Córdova ‘Spring’ (7″) (MM007) Powerdove ‘Do You Burn?’ (LP/CD) (MM006) La Terre Tremble !!! ‘Salvage Blues’ (LP/CD) (MM005) Electric Electric ‘Discipline’ (double
- 08/12/2014
MY NAME IS NOBODY FEAT. PILLARS AND TONGUES REJOUENT ‘JOLENE’ DE DOLLY PARTON!
Pour la seconde édition de la ‘Folk journée’ au Lieu Unique à Nantes, Vincent Dupas à travers son projet My Name Is Nobody sera accompagné des américains de Pillars & Tongues (déjà vu au lieu unique l’année dernière dans le cadre du festival Assis! Debout! Couché! ),et fait le pari de reprendre in extenso un album mythique de la
- 24/11/2014
Pillars and Tongues + My Name Is Nobody : french ‘safe travel’
Le Nantais Vincent Dupas (My Name Is Nobody) et le trio chicagoan Pillars and Tongues ne se quittent plus depuis plusieurs mois : après la présence de Vincent Dupas sur scène en mars 2014 lors de la tournée française des américains, voici ‘Safe Travel‘, le nouvel album de My Name Is Nobody enregistré pendant l’été 2013 avec le trio,
- 03/11/2014
My Name Is Nobody + Pillars and Tongues en concert à Paris 04-12-14
Vincent Dupas, toujours à la colle avec le trio Pillars and Tongues : il les secondait sur scène en mars, les voilà qui lui prêtent main forte sur le nouvel album de My Name Is Nobody, ‘Safe Travel’ (enregistré chez eux, à Chicago). Tournée générale en feux croisés pour fêter ça, et date unique à Paris ce jeudi 4 décembre
- 24/03/2014
PILLARS AND TONGUES : NOUVELLE SIGNATURE LABEL + TOURNÉE EU
Originaires de Chicago, Ben Babbitt, Beth Remis et Mark Trecka forment le trio Pillars and Tongues. Dès leur premier EP Protection en 2008 (sur le label Contraphonic), leur musique ambivalente, énigmatique, relie à sa manière rêveuse les points cardinaux de la musique primitive américaine (fantômes folk soufflant partout, blues renfrogné comme rejoué aux osselets dans la cour de l’immeuble) en la passant au prisme
- 13/03/2014
Festival ‘Assis! Debout! Couché!’ 21 mars : Josephine Foster, Pillars and Tongues
Dans des genres relativement différents, c’est une certaine idée du songwriting qui sera présentée en cette première soirée : un songwriting racé, demandant l’attention des spectateurs et livré dans des habillages sonores délicats n’incitant pas forcément à des cabrioles endiablées. Bref, la position assise est belle et bien requise pour apprécier toutes les subtilités des
BIO
‘End-dances’ is the new album by Pillars and Tongues on Empty Cellar Records. Although from Chicago, Beth Remis, Ben Babbitt, and Mark Trecka have spent much of the last few years traveling, performing music in a wide variety of contexts, exploring the severe and sublime landscapes of America, and returning to or refusing to return to variations on the theme of home. Recorded by Theo Karon, ‘End-dances’ leaps forward in the direction implied by the last full-length, ‘The Pass and Crossings’, and the recent cassette, If Travel is Asked of Me.
Long-form compositions are coerced into considered and patiently constructed songs, resulting in their most pop-oriented work to date. But in that, the work allies with the darker, stranger side of the pop realm, evoking the drama and atmosphere of Dead Can Dance, and the art-prog experimentation of Peter Gabriel’s ‘4’.
The characteristic harmonium and violin blend with enveloping synths, undulating loops and gated rhythms of hazy origin. Karon’s adventurous engineering is apparent throughout the record; the band’s attention to the expressive potential of the sounds themselves is supported by mesmeric tape loops, saturated vocal echoes, and vibrant tones coaxed from radically transformed sources. Points of intersection between the acoustic and the electronic are embraced, calling the assumed organic nature of a drum and the artifice of a synthesizer into question.
Loping, hypnotic rhythms give way to cinematic ambient passages, receding to reveal, again and again, the voices, with Trecka’s bold baritone in the lead. Remis’ voice — central and refined — conjures, floats, and skitters, at varying points harmonizing with and countering Trecka’s lead, as both chant against Babbitt’s croon. The lyrics are poetic, exploring themes of ambivalence, health and the acts of writing and singing.
‘Knifelike’ reads like a less optimistic version of Kate Bush’s ‘Love and Anger’, flirting with tender descriptions of metaphorical violence: “My lines, knifelike impressions of your life / give teeth to timelines / cut knuckles testify”. ‘Bell + Rein’ is an acknowledged homage to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Take This Longing’, reiterating an infamous desire to not desire. ‘Medora’ and ‘Travel’ are both hallucinatory descriptions of travel as an act of self-actualization. “I ride through / to follow / where I go”.
‘Ends’ evokes the elegiac melancholy of William Basinski, pitting a single thin and unadorned violin against a torrent of tape-garbled pianos. Pitchfork conceded in 2010 that “it’s difficult to talk about influences or genres with Pillars and Tongues, and almost as hard to talk about their sound.” And The Chicago Tribune has said that the group “defies easy categorization, unless you’re looking in that bin marked ‘essential.” While affinities may be noted with contemporaries like Julia Holter, Liars and others working creatively with tone, texture, and ambience, in the context of voice-driven songwriting, Pillars and Tongues cuts a singular path through the contemporary musical landscape.
LINE-UP
Mark Trecka : harmonium, synthesizer, baritone voice
Ben Babbitt : percussion, drums, bass, backing vocals
Beth Remitted : violin, backing vocals
LINKS
PRESS
PITCHFORK
“Singer Mark Trecka has a deep, sonorous baritone that can carry the long notes… with a wizened authority. The band uses vocals almost like stringed instruments, which become even more noticeable when violins are added to their chanting”
CHICAGO MAG
“The evolving sound of this trio of heady experimentalists, who’ve melded everything from world music appropriations, orchestral flourishes, and ’80s goth touchstones, is unpredictable but continually touching. Their 2013 release [End-dances] is perhaps their most pop oriented with nods to Dead Can Dance and David Bowie, namely through vocalist Mark Trecka’s baritone delivery, but also through its airy, romantic arrangements that are both breathy and breathtaking.”
BALTIMORE CITY PAPER
“What makes Chicago’s Pillars and Tongues so enchanting is the disarming alchemy with which the ensemble stirs up its otherworldly song. Straddling the vocal out-of-body keening of Daniel Higgs and the levitating musical atomic peace of Alice Coltrane at her most drone-leaning”
SF BAY GUARDIAN
“Pillars and Tongues cite Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, W.G. Sebald, and Interstate 25 among their primary influences. It’s an eclectic list, but one indicative of the furrowed contemplation and entrancing horizon lines conjured by these Chicago experimentalists”
NO FEAR OF POP
“Pillars and Tongues music always has one foot in the avant-garde, while never completely abandoning pop, which in this case is gloomy, dark, and dreamy, almost cinematic, evoking pictures of lost and doomed landscapes.”
7 INCHES (USA)
“Mark Trecka‘s vocal is an emotional chant, witness to a ritual, a primal, ancient rite reenacted by a trained classical vocalist who’s aware of the space and the way a body can project. (…) The repetition and loops encourage a meditative trance like some kind of new age psych, mentally changing the way you approach hearing these sounds.”
CONTACT
Booking: samuel.muraillesmusic@gmail.com
Promo: promo.muraillesmusic[at]gmail.com
TAGS
PILLARS AND TONGUES - 'Points Of Light' (filmed and directed by Randy Sterling Hunter in Sri Lanka, Germany, and Austria)
-
PILLARS AND TONGUES - 'Knifelike'
-
PILLARS AND TONGUES - 'The Making Graceful'
-
PILLARS AND TONGUES - 'Thank You, Oaky'
-
PILLARS AND TONGUES 'Dogs' (live at Santa Fe, USA -2013)
PILLARS AND TONGUES 'Ships' (Le Cargo acoustic live session - Paris, 2014)
PILLARS AND TONGUES 'No Reply' (video session at Beauregard (fr), march 2014)
DISCOGRAPHIE
END-DANCES
Empty Cellar Records / Murailles Music 2014
LP / CD / digital
BuyIf Travel is Asked of Me
Empty Cellar2012
lp
(Laid) Palms to Tell
Empty Cellar2012
ep
Oaky ( doting, in late summer )
Empty Cellar2011
ep
The pass and Crossings
Empty Cellar2011
lp
Lay of Pilgrim Parl
Empty Cellar2010
ep
OF THE MIRACLE
2009
ep
PROTECTION
2008
ep
Past shows
- DateCountryCityVenuewith
- 12/17/2014FranceNantesLe Ferrailleur Selman Bellinsky, Draacheinfos event
- 12/13/2014FranceLorientLe GalionMY NAME IS NOBODYinfos
- 12/11/2014FranceLe MansLe BaroufMY NAME IS NOBODYinfos event
- 12/10/2014FranceToursLe Temps MachineJay Mascis, My Name is Nobodyinfos event
- 12/09/2014FranceBeauregardLe PresbytèreMY NAME IS NOBODY
- 12/06/2014FranceCastelfrancDerrière l'UsineMY NAME IS NOBODYinfos event
- 12/05/2014FranceRennesOan's PubMY NAME IS NOBODYinfos
- 12/04/2014FranceParisOlympic CaféMy Name Is Nobodyinfos event
- 12/03/2014FranceRouenEmporium GaloriumMY NAME IS NOBODY event
- 11/29/2014FranceNantesCafé du Cinéma event
- 04/05/2014FranceStrasbourgGalerie No Smokinginfos event
- 04/04/2014FrancePraha-Břevnov (Cz)Klub 007 - Strahovinfos event
- 04/03/2014République TchèqueBrno (Cz)Boroinfos
- 04/02/2014FranceNovi Sad (Sr)CK13infos event
- 04/01/2014CroatieZabok (Hr)MMC Zabok, Green Room SessionsTimber Rattle event
- 03/31/2014FranceZagreb (Hr)Klub Močvarainfos event
- 03/30/2014FranceMestre (It)Spazio Aereoinfos
- 03/29/2014ItalieTerni (It)Palmettainfos event
- 03/27/2014FranceReggio Emilia (it)Dinamo event
- 03/26/2014ItalieForlì-Cesena (It)Diagonal Loft Clubinfos event
- 03/25/2014FranceMantova (it)Arci Virgilioinfos event
- 03/24/2014FranceGrenobleHouse Show
- 03/22/2014FranceNiortFestival Nouvelles Scènes, Le Vintageinfos event
- 03/21/2014FranceNantesLe Lieu Unique, Festival 'Assis! Debout! Couché!'Sun Kill Moon, Melanie de Biasio, Mendelson, Sonic Boom DJinfos event
- 03/20/2014FranceAngletEcuries de Barojainfos event
- 03/19/2014FranceToulouse Pavillons SauvagesSeilman Bellinsky event
- 03/18/2014FranceFauguerolles (47)House showinfos
- 03/17/2014FranceBeauregardLe Presbytère event
- 03/15/2014FranceNaucellesFestival Hibernarock, Salle PolyvalenteAberdeenersinfos event
- 03/14/2014FranceSegré (49)Les Boissons Rouges event
- 03/13/2014FranceLe MansLe Baroufinfos event
- 03/12/2014FranceParisPoint ÉphémèreMatt Elliott (solo)infos event
- 03/11/2014FranceLilleL'Antre 2Sijosaïinfos event
- 03/10/2014BelgiqueGent (Be)Café Videoinfos event
- 03/09/2014FranceTincquesHouse Show, L'Auréole Béthencourtinfos event
PILLARS AND TONGUES - 'Points Of Light' (filmed and directed by Randy Sterling Hunter in Sri Lanka, Germany, and Austria)
-
PILLARS AND TONGUES - 'Knifelike'
-
PILLARS AND TONGUES - 'The Making Graceful'
-
PILLARS AND TONGUES - 'Thank You, Oaky'
-
PILLARS AND TONGUES 'Dogs' (live at Santa Fe, USA -2013)
PILLARS AND TONGUES 'Ships' (Le Cargo acoustic live session - Paris, 2014)
PILLARS AND TONGUES 'No Reply' (video session at Beauregard (fr), march 2014)
NEWS
- 06/10/2015
Serpentine : création ambient, arts numériques (Chicago/Nantes)
En plein cœur de la capitale de l’Illinois, ville énorme et bruyante, Serpentine capte les sons (feux d’artifices, sirènes, brouhaha de rues) pour les transformer au travers de pédales analogiques. L’écriture de ces pièces instrumentales oscille entre lenteur, harmonie réverbérée et expérimentation noise. Serpentine s’est produit une fois, le 21 juillet 2014, lors d’une Ambient
- 16/12/2014
LABEL XMAS SALE / PROMO DE NOËL
20% SUR TOUT NOTRE SHOP PENDANT 1 MOIS ! * 20% DISCOUNT ON THE WHOLE CATALOG UNTIL JANUARY 15th ! * ~ ENTER CODE XMASSALE ON OUR BIGCARTEL ~ CATALOGUE (MM011) Powerdove ‘Arrest’ (LP/CD) (MM010) Pillars and Tongues ‘End Dances’ (LP/CD) (MM009) Ramona Córdova ‘Quinn To New Relationship’s (LP/CD) (MM008) Ramona Córdova ‘Spring’ (7″) (MM007) Powerdove ‘Do You Burn?’ (LP/CD) (MM006) La Terre Tremble !!! ‘Salvage Blues’ (LP/CD) (MM005) Electric Electric ‘Discipline’ (double
- 08/12/2014
MY NAME IS NOBODY FEAT. PILLARS AND TONGUES REJOUENT ‘JOLENE’ DE DOLLY PARTON!
Pour la seconde édition de la ‘Folk journée’ au Lieu Unique à Nantes, Vincent Dupas à travers son projet My Name Is Nobody sera accompagné des américains de Pillars & Tongues (déjà vu au lieu unique l’année dernière dans le cadre du festival Assis! Debout! Couché! ),et fait le pari de reprendre in extenso un album mythique de la
- 24/11/2014
Pillars and Tongues + My Name Is Nobody : french ‘safe travel’
Le Nantais Vincent Dupas (My Name Is Nobody) et le trio chicagoan Pillars and Tongues ne se quittent plus depuis plusieurs mois : après la présence de Vincent Dupas sur scène en mars 2014 lors de la tournée française des américains, voici ‘Safe Travel‘, le nouvel album de My Name Is Nobody enregistré pendant l’été 2013 avec le trio,
- 03/11/2014
My Name Is Nobody + Pillars and Tongues en concert à Paris 04-12-14
Vincent Dupas, toujours à la colle avec le trio Pillars and Tongues : il les secondait sur scène en mars, les voilà qui lui prêtent main forte sur le nouvel album de My Name Is Nobody, ‘Safe Travel’ (enregistré chez eux, à Chicago). Tournée générale en feux croisés pour fêter ça, et date unique à Paris ce jeudi 4 décembre
- 24/03/2014
PILLARS AND TONGUES : NOUVELLE SIGNATURE LABEL + TOURNÉE EU
Originaires de Chicago, Ben Babbitt, Beth Remis et Mark Trecka forment le trio Pillars and Tongues. Dès leur premier EP Protection en 2008 (sur le label Contraphonic), leur musique ambivalente, énigmatique, relie à sa manière rêveuse les points cardinaux de la musique primitive américaine (fantômes folk soufflant partout, blues renfrogné comme rejoué aux osselets dans la cour de l’immeuble) en la passant au prisme
- 13/03/2014
Festival ‘Assis! Debout! Couché!’ 21 mars : Josephine Foster, Pillars and Tongues
Dans des genres relativement différents, c’est une certaine idée du songwriting qui sera présentée en cette première soirée : un songwriting racé, demandant l’attention des spectateurs et livré dans des habillages sonores délicats n’incitant pas forcément à des cabrioles endiablées. Bref, la position assise est belle et bien requise pour apprécier toutes les subtilités des
BIO
‘End-dances’ is the new album by Pillars and Tongues on Empty Cellar Records. Although from Chicago, Beth Remis, Ben Babbitt, and Mark Trecka have spent much of the last few years traveling, performing music in a wide variety of contexts, exploring the severe and sublime landscapes of America, and returning to or refusing to return to variations on the theme of home. Recorded by Theo Karon, ‘End-dances’ leaps forward in the direction implied by the last full-length, ‘The Pass and Crossings’, and the recent cassette, If Travel is Asked of Me.
Long-form compositions are coerced into considered and patiently constructed songs, resulting in their most pop-oriented work to date. But in that, the work allies with the darker, stranger side of the pop realm, evoking the drama and atmosphere of Dead Can Dance, and the art-prog experimentation of Peter Gabriel’s ‘4’.
The characteristic harmonium and violin blend with enveloping synths, undulating loops and gated rhythms of hazy origin. Karon’s adventurous engineering is apparent throughout the record; the band’s attention to the expressive potential of the sounds themselves is supported by mesmeric tape loops, saturated vocal echoes, and vibrant tones coaxed from radically transformed sources. Points of intersection between the acoustic and the electronic are embraced, calling the assumed organic nature of a drum and the artifice of a synthesizer into question.
Loping, hypnotic rhythms give way to cinematic ambient passages, receding to reveal, again and again, the voices, with Trecka’s bold baritone in the lead. Remis’ voice — central and refined — conjures, floats, and skitters, at varying points harmonizing with and countering Trecka’s lead, as both chant against Babbitt’s croon. The lyrics are poetic, exploring themes of ambivalence, health and the acts of writing and singing.
‘Knifelike’ reads like a less optimistic version of Kate Bush’s ‘Love and Anger’, flirting with tender descriptions of metaphorical violence: “My lines, knifelike impressions of your life / give teeth to timelines / cut knuckles testify”. ‘Bell + Rein’ is an acknowledged homage to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Take This Longing’, reiterating an infamous desire to not desire. ‘Medora’ and ‘Travel’ are both hallucinatory descriptions of travel as an act of self-actualization. “I ride through / to follow / where I go”.
‘Ends’ evokes the elegiac melancholy of William Basinski, pitting a single thin and unadorned violin against a torrent of tape-garbled pianos. Pitchfork conceded in 2010 that “it’s difficult to talk about influences or genres with Pillars and Tongues, and almost as hard to talk about their sound.” And The Chicago Tribune has said that the group “defies easy categorization, unless you’re looking in that bin marked ‘essential.” While affinities may be noted with contemporaries like Julia Holter, Liars and others working creatively with tone, texture, and ambience, in the context of voice-driven songwriting, Pillars and Tongues cuts a singular path through the contemporary musical landscape.
LINE-UP
Mark Trecka : harmonium, synthesizer, baritone voice
Ben Babbitt : percussion, drums, bass, backing vocals
Beth Remitted : violin, backing vocals
LINKS
PRESS
PITCHFORK
“Singer Mark Trecka has a deep, sonorous baritone that can carry the long notes… with a wizened authority. The band uses vocals almost like stringed instruments, which become even more noticeable when violins are added to their chanting”
DISCOGRAPHIE
END-DANCES
Empty Cellar Records / Murailles Music 2014
LP / CD / digital
BuyIf Travel is Asked of Me
Empty Cellar2012
lp
(Laid) Palms to Tell
Empty Cellar2012
ep
Oaky ( doting, in late summer )
Empty Cellar2011
ep
The pass and Crossings
Empty Cellar2011
lp
Lay of Pilgrim Parl
Empty Cellar2010
ep
OF THE MIRACLE
2009
ep
PROTECTION
2008
ep
CONTACT
Booking: samuel.muraillesmusic@gmail.com
Promo: promo.muraillesmusic[at]gmail.com