Qua - 'One Second'
We saw Qua - aka Cornel Wilczek - most recently at the
Super 8 Diaries launch in Sydney several months ago. In between the beardy thrashing and droning improv of the majority of guitar bands that day, the bubbling beats and clear washes of Qua and his curious little desktop set-up proved a joyous breath of fresh air - and a neat reminder that one man and his laptop/ironing-board can be captivating with the right soundtrack. That being an experimental fusion of sound collage, IDM and pure, dappled pop.
Wilczek has just released his new album
Silver Red the first of two new records coming out this year under the Qua banner. Spawned from an "evolving piece of
music that began in 2005" and "heavily improvisational",
Silver Red will be followed up sometime later in the year by the "little more uptempo" and pop
Q&A.
He explains on his
website: "It has been clear for some time that my music has pulled me in two
directions. The 'processed, semi-improvised, ambient-ish stuff' and the 'pop, beat-based' side of things have continuously thrown me. I've
decided to keep the two things separate for now and release two albums this
year.
Silver Red, out this week, is an epic, lush improv piece while
Q&A, out later in the year, will satisfy the dancefloor a little
more. For now it feels nice to keep them separate."
This cut 'One Second' is the final of the four movements that make up
Silver Apples. It's not indicative of the LP overall apparently, serving instead as a "reaction" to the album. Wilczek writes. "It felt necessary to
somehow resolve the album and boil it down to a few simple sounds. It
looks at
Silver Red from the view point of artists such as Ennio
Morricone, Kristoff Komeda and Scott Walker and somehow extrudes one
second of time from
Silver Red."
Which is fine by us. More Qua = the best kind of Qua.
Silver Red is out now via
quamusic.com and
Someone Good records.
http://www.myspace.com/quamusic