The Wheel / Claustrum by Amédée de Murcia, released 31 October 2025
- The Wheel
- Claustrum
For the first listen of The Wheel / Claustrum, the image of a suikinkutsu slowly materialized. Placed next to a chōzubachi, a basin in a traditional Japanese garden, the suikinkutsu is an upside-down jar buried under stones that resonates with the sound of water flowing during the ritual cleansing of hands before a tea ceremony. Each drop of water follows its own path, travels through the porosity of the rocks, appreciates the volumes as it falls, and sometimes encounters a metal rod that disorients it.
Amédée de Murcia's compositional work focuses on exploring the inertia of sound textures and the ways in which they intertwine. Each element seems to have been defined by very specific physical characteristics (weight, resistance, rebound, etc.), and setting them in motion has an impact on the fabric of listening. Imagine sound as a variable geometric imprint whose positively charged poles diffuse an atonal magnetism.
Subsequently, the artist's interpretation draws on multiple aesthetics in turn. In The Wheel, listeners will find themselves oscillating between the frenetic synths of Lorenzo Senni-style rave music, the swirling minimalism of Steve Reich, and the staccato rhythms of Mark Fell's SND era. Claustrum, on the other hand, is more like a slow-paced world tour of metallophones. The four bonus tracks on the digital version offer alternative trajectories that could have been applied to the musician's approach.
Amédée de Murcia is a French artist based in Saint-Étienne who has been active since 2006 in the underground electronic music scene through various solo projects (Somaticae, Zone Bleue) and bands (OD Bongo, Balladur, Jazzoux). Beyond his prolific musical output, he is also a staunch promoter of divergent cultures through his involvement in organizing concerts, festivals, fanzines, etc.
