Paris-based cellist, composer and producer Gaspar Claus is one of those artists whose name keeps cropping up before you’ve quite worked out why; collaborations with Bryce Dessner of The National, Sufjan Stevens, Japanese noise legend Keiji Haino and French producer Rone; a debut album praised for its singularity; a father who is flamenco guitarist Pedro Soler.
He makes contemporary chamber music threaded with Mediterranean folk and electronic experimentation, and his new album ‘Cells’ is out tomorrow. Every sound on it originates from a cello, then processed, stretched, metamorphosed into percussion and synthetic textures in a custom-built studio in Banyuls-sur-Mer.
“Listening to the album, I feel a kind of fertile struggle between the instrument and its digitalisation”, says Claus. “The electronics remain organic because their raw material always comes from the cello”.
New single ‘Ecstasy’ is the album’s furthest venture into electronic territory - dense, physical, shot through with the kind of sensory intensity the title promises.
🎧 Watch the video for ‘Ecstasy’ below