SLOWLY PARADISE

Eric Chenaux makes conceptual music that's not meant to sound conceptual. He operates
among various 'traditions' but perhaps most broadly, Chenaux's records grapple with the
relationship between improvisation and structure in very particular, unique, idiosyncratic
ways - and quite without irony or cynicism, through love.
Because fundamentally, Chenaux writes love songs, which he sings in a voice honeyed and
clear, while his guitar gently bends, frazzes, chortles, diverges and decomposes. This
juxtaposition of his mellow, dexterous crooning and his highly experimental (and equally
dexterous) guitar explorations, explodes even unconventional notions of singing and
accompaniment, of tonal and timbral interplay between guitar and voice.
As a solo artist, Chenaux's improvisation methods are in certain literal ways solipsistic: as a
singer-songwriter, he plays his guitar around and against his voice, challenging easy
notions of harmony/harmoniousness, improvising 'with himself' in pursuit of surprising
himself (and his listeners) as he unfurls ribbons of voice and instrument often to the point
of seeming independence, all the better to capture - and be captured by - unforeseen,
intimate moments of interdependence: a definition of freedom, as a profoundly
intentional state of openness, presence and play