Paris based Swiss composer Nelson Beer releases an all-new double A-Side single titled ‘Orlando / In Defence of the Unheard’ available to stream on all major streaming platforms. This special release serves as a small tease of what listeners can except off of his upcoming EP set to be released this Spring through [PIAS] Recordings. Nelson Beer is a Paris based Swiss composer currently working between Paris and Geneva, and the mind behind ON LAND collective, which promotes experimentation and interchange of different types of music and cultures. His productions resonate with club music, with personal favorites from Nelson’s prior releases to include Oblique I and Oblique II for their polished mix of ambient sounds and musique concrète composition. In 2017, Nelson Beer collaborated as a sound designer with French artist Marguerite Humeau for her exhibition RIDDLES at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, along working with George Henry Longly for the DAIMYO exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
When asked how Nelson arrived at creating this new project, Nelson responds:
Orlando marks the continuity of my research around the question of identity politics. Here the role of the composer and the performer in the contemporary socio-cultural context is questioned. I am looking for an artistic manoeuvre that, without excluding it, is critical of the global industry and suggests that it endangers human rights in its persistence. Orlando – the sound and the character – as in Virginia Woolf’s eponymous work, becomes a piece of evidence to the chaotic world order.
Nelson continues to add,
Orlando was composed with the idea of using sound as a means of archiving the present and as a fluid archive of history. I have been inspired by different Western European traditions in the use of the diatonic and pentatonic major scale (folk), thirds (country) and recording techniques such as field recording and binoral microphones (musique concrète, electro-acoustic music). I have also been influenced by classical music from South Asia where the space between notes is often more important than the notes themselves, such as the khali in Indian tala which is a specific notation for ghost notes.
Nelson Beer is set to release his upcoming EP this Spring through [PIAS] Recordings with an exact release date of April 9, 2021. Stream his newly released double A-Side single titled ‘Orlando / In Defence of the Unheard’ below via Spotify.
