TONED by TONED

“This is HUGE... the extension of range here is baffling, perverse, gutsy – and, concomitantly, ultimately compelling.” – Kyle Bruckmann (Splinter Reeds)

“This is a hard-core group.” – John Bischoff (The Hub)

"It's good shit." - Dr. Kyle Hutchins (Saxophone Faculty, Virginia Tech)

TONED (S/T) is the fourth full-length studio album from the electroacoustic trio TONED. Composed and recorded in Oakland, Tampa, and Philadelphia during a series of cloistered retreats, and meticulously crafted in monastic isolation for nearly two years, TONED is the band’s most ambitious statement to date. TONED pits the fiercely analog, animalistic saxophone of Tom Weeks against the crushing digital precision of Nathan Corder's eminently mutable networks, alongside the poly directional structures of Leo Suarez’s approach to percussion, all while maintaining a driving, rock-hard musical synthesis - following in the tradition of Roscoe Mitchell’s encounters with George Lewis’ Voyager, Bay Area legends The Hub and Possessed, and the brutally technical compositions of Disgorge. The trio’s decentralized locale, between Oakland and Philadelphia, is reflected in the nonlinear and non-hierarchical processes that construct the band’s self-titled release.

Featuring guest performances by Sulynn Hago (Propaghandi), David Vassalotti (Merchandise), and the psychosexual existentialism of poet Michael Bahr, TONED continues the band’s developments in the esoteric realms of contemporary composition, xenochronic formalization, and sonic descriptor analysis – a method born from utopic visions of a unified taxonomy of “sound-space”, but which now fuels the dystopian engines of techno-hellscapes like Spotify and Pandora – the Bicoastal trio offers TONED as a fractal chimera, generated by multiple layers of compositional feedback loops. Through this album, the trio works towards a completely restructured, and highly personalized sonic destination, born from a collective distrust in the canons of present-day art forms and commonly ingested sound principles.

Beautifully mastered by Alex Colombo (Diamond Soul), TONED has also collaborated with Berlin-based video artist Kenji Jones to produce the album artwork and the video for the first single ‘New Regimes.’

TONED is the electroacoustic music ensemble of Nathan Corder (electronics), Tom Weeks (alto saxophone), and Leo Suarez (drum set). TONED engages with extremes, operating in the realms of deeply listened sensitivity, muscular sonic assaults, and impenetrable modernist abstractions.

tomweeksmusic.com
nathancorder.com
Leo Suarez
Tom Weeks
Nathan Corder