HEY!TONAL - s/t 2LP

Pressed on double white vinyl with all four sides running at 45 rpm, packaged in a superb gatefold cover complete with a massive poster, all housed in metallic packaging that reflects Computer Students’ futuristic ethos.

Hey!Tonal is the first album by HEY!TONAL, a project helmed by the guitarists, multi-instrumentalists and sound designers Mitch Cheney (Rumah Sakit, Sweep the Leg Johnny) and Alan Mills (Chiisai-oto). Each member constructed the album instrument-by-instrument between 2006 and 2008 over a vast geographical area from NYC, Chicago, Florida, San Diego and Nantes in France. Main collaborators included Kevin Shea (Storm; Stress), Theo Katsaounis (Joan of Arc, Dead Rider), and Dave Davison (Maps; Atlases). Kenseth Thibideau (Rumah Sakit, Sleeping People) and Julien Fernandez (Chevreuil) joined the group for a song as well. In 2009 the album was released by Africantape on CD format; now, Hey!Tonal has been remastered by Carl Saff and pressed to vinyl for the first time. Cheney initially conceived HEY!TONAL as a project to be called “Drummers’ Perspectives”, and that working title sums up its ethos. He came up with the idea in 2006 while using the application Reason to program beats, substituting drum samples with guitar and dulcimer sounds. He became inspired to write melodies based on the drumbeat being the starting point of composition, opposed to the other way around. A providential meeting with Alan Mills meant another collaborator would try his hand at the resultant rhythmic and melodic tangle. The two quickly came to form the nucleus of HEY!TONAL. The basic concept for their compositional process stemmed from Cheney's experience with television editing. The two manipulated all the catalogued sounds as if they were visual elements. The result of this unusual approach is a striking record, full of delicate incongruities hidden in the music; happy accidents were meticulously given purpose during mixing, malleable drums and guitars intertwined with a myriad of improvised and shaped sounds. The overall impression is of some oblique explanation to an unsolved mystery.