Ondanaconda

Description

Ondanaconda does not compose with the jew's harp, but through it. For their first self-titled album, the quartet makes this lamellophone, often perceived as archaic, the sole sound source of the record. Present for centuries on several continents, from Asia to Europe, the jew's harp is played against the teeth and transforms the mouth into a resonating chamber, sculpting the sound with breath and body movements. Here, amplified, prepared, sometimes mishandled, it becomes alternately percussion, bass, drone, texture - a true mouth synthesizer with extensive possibilities. Between performance and trance, Ondanaconda shapes an unidentified sound object, somewhere between collective ritual and raw electroacoustic experience. Each piece is born from a precise arrangement of jew's harps, exploring their timbral affinities and rhythmic or harmonic potentials, while leaving ample room for drift and improvisation. Repetition acts as an unstable engine, distorting patterns until they shift elsewhere. Together, Laurent Bruttin, Antoine Läng, John Menoud, and Daniel Zea weave a compact and moving mass, where individualities fade into an organic, almost hallucinatory polyphony. Designed as a continuum, the album unfolds in a hypnotic flow, a physical and immersive music that circulates from mouths to bodies, until it saturates the space. A radical UFO, at the border of concert, performance, and sound installation.