Knell

Alex Cunningham is a violinist, improviser and visual artist based in St. Louis, MO. Knell is his fourth solo violin release, and the third of which that's entirely improvised. Initially seeming to document a brutal attack on the instrument, the album progresses more like a surgical examination, with Cunningham.digging into the physical properties of wood, bow and strings to wrench out a wealth of sonic detail. Downtuning and sheer kinetic intensity produce harsh abrasion, percussive rattling, and rich overtones, and there's even an attempt to utilise the violin as a wind instrument. Tonal playing is only arrived at after apparently significant effort, in bursts of backwoods hysteria.