I’ve been looking forward to sharing this video for over a week now. There is something in Andrew Tuttle’s music that rekindles a joy I usually feel when discovering a new sound for the first time. Over the years, I’ve found that such feelings are often diluted by the noise of distraction and repeated patterns of music, something which just seems to increase year on year…then this comes along. Like me, Tuttle may well be a new name to those of you outside Australia, but I believe that’s all about to change.
The accompanying press for Tuttle’s forthcoming album ‘Alexandra’ (15 April on Room40) opens “Andrew Tuttle grew up in Alexandra Hills, a quiet slice of rural life in Redlands, a city which lies 20km or so from Brisbane, on the East Coast of Australia.” Named after his home, Alexandra is the “sound of rediscovering one’s environment, almost twenty years on, tracing it with an organic, expanding flow of energy.” We’ve touched on psychogeography in music before on Folk Radio, the impact of which is often underestimated. California buried into the fabric of William Tyler‘s Goes West – a place where you cannot go any further west, or you’ll hit the ocean, and Junkboys Trains, Trees, Topophilia was affected by a reawakening and awareness of their surroundings in Essex.
Later in life, we are sometimes drawn back to these places that are locked in memories and old photographs. In the case of Tuttle, it was a fortuitous path of chance meetings, house-sitting and blissful spring days that led him back to his childhood habitat, awakening an ardent awareness of place that was both intimately familiar and strangely new. This experience of psychogeography inspired Tuttle to delve into the soul of one little patch of the world.
Sometimes it’s just good to ramble for the sake of it…On the accompanying video for Sun At 5 In 4161 (the guitar tuning for which was inspired by Matmos’s ‘Sun On 5 At 152‘) we begin on a journey, on which we’re invited to explore the environment that helped inspire this album.
No stranger to the DIY scene, Tuttle has assembled a wealth of exceptional players on this release, some of which are very telling of his love for the acoustic guitar which he has pursued with a passion since he was a child. Those players include Chuck Johnson who also mixed the album (Saariselka, VDSQ, Three Lobed, Scissor Tail), Tony Dupe (Saddleback), Sarah Spencer (Blank Realm), Gwenifer Raymond (Tompkins Square), Joel Saunders (Spirit Bunny) and Joe Saxby (These Guy).
Painting broad strokes of local colour amongst a deeply rooted spirit of place, Alexandra is a journey that tranquilises the restless mind. This expansive album cycles through a rediscovered environment, illuminating forgotten or over- looked landmarks, evoking the dreamy ritual of the “flâneur” (a romantic figure imagined by Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin) who wanders the streets, with the sole purpose to wander.
Alexandra is released on 15 May 2020 via Room40
Pre-Order here: https://room40.bandcamp.com/
Photo Credit: Bryan Spencer