Amoral Avatar is a new collaboration between guitarist Leo Abrahams and drummer Chris Vatalaro.

Featuring 18 improvised tracks displaying a concise and singular approach, the album was tracked in a single day. There is a distinctive sense of time and place – of a moment captured and refracted.

Raw and distorted, yet still strangely intimate, the record consistently challenges expectation. By turns aggressive, tender, abstract and melodic, it defies categorization – operating on the borders between post-rock and musique concrète, yet presenting an aesthetically coherent experience that rewards repeated listening.

Leo and Chris have worked together extensively over the years on projects for other artists, but their collaborative partnership was forged in 2014 across the 4000 mile Muzenergo tour of Southern Siberia. Both musicians are multifaceted, Vatalaro augmenting his drum kit with found objects, contact microphones and electronics, and Abrahams making use of an array of effects pedals and pitch-tracking devices. This is where their soundworlds intersect, at times impossible to discern who is doing what.

They share an interest in extremes – perfectionism and abandon, sincerity and satire, the tactile and the virtual. All of these are evident in their collaboration.

Vatalaro has described the record as being “Two parts emergency music, one part sculpture”, embodying “the virtues of knackered vhs”. In response, Abrahams has set every track of the record to found video, pairing the audio with early experiments in computer-generated imagery and the pioneering film studies of Hans Richter These will be made available daily as an online ‘advent calendar’ over the 18 days leading up to the official release date.

https://soundcloud.com/trestlerecords/aa5