www.myspace.com/ericchenaux

Eric Chenaux: voice, nylon-string guitar, electric guitar, electric bass, fiddle, triangle, mouth-speaker
Ryan Driver: synth, piano, voice, flute, street-sweeper bristle bass, electric organ

GUESTS
Jennifer Castle: voice
Michelle McAdorey: voice
Rob Clutton: double bass
Martin Arnold: electric organ
Nick Fraser: kick drum

Recorded by Radwan Moumneh at Thee Mighty Hotel2Tango. Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market. Produced by Eric Chenaux, Ryan Driver and Radwan Moumneh.

Description
Eric Chenaux is one of Toronto’s most prolific and respected musical iconoclasts, an experimental guitar virtuoso with over two decades of dedicated and diverse service to an artistic community that encompasses postpunk, lo-fi, folk, multi-media composition and performance (chiefly in collaboration with modern dance) and free and improvised music. Warm Weather With Ryan Driver is Eric’s third album for Constellation, which has been the conduit for his primary song-oriented solo work since 2006. Building on his fruitful collaboration with piano/synth/melodica player Ryan Driver – whose key role on the new album is signaled by his inclusion in its very title – the new record is without doubt Chenaux’s most accomplished and focused work of forward-looking, contemporary balladry.

Chenaux’s previous album Sloppy Ground was a masterful exploration of fried folkways wedded to improvisational/avant strategies – it was named one of the 50 albums of the year by The Wire magazine. Buzzing, winding melodic lines derived from Scottish folk tropes paced many of these songs, interspersed with expansive, atmospheric lullabyes that were noted by NPR’s All Songs Considered as “drop-dead gorgeous…earnest and heartfelt”. We certainly feel these words thoroughly apply to the new album as well.

Warm Weather With Ryan Driver envelops the twin tendencies of Sloppy Ground – ornate experimentation with extended melodic structures and cradling lullabye/love song ambience – in a newfound coherence and temperance. Chenaux’s use of nylon string guitar as the spine for almost every track (expertly captured by sound engineer Radwan Moumneh) is the most notable shift in instrumentation from its predecessor. The instrument establishes a slightly different but timbrally profound anchor for the new tunes. As the album title suggests, the record is unified by a kind of .......
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