Experimental composer Maxwell Sterling has revealed that he’ll be releasing a new album called Turn Of Phrase on April 16 through AD 93. He has also shared the first taste of what’s to come on his experiential new record in the form of “Tenderness”, which features vocals from the legendary Leslie Winer. Sterling says:
“Leslie is inspiration in concentrated form. Each word, nuance and cadence suggest harmonies and soundscapes that I could typically only dream of. I think of Tenderness as a conversation – Leslie and I sent ideas back and forth, each one informing the other. The result is something oddly operatic and tragically ecstatic.”
Winer returns the complements, saying:
“Working with Maxwell Sterling is like a dream, like driving a ’71 Riviera in the rain, nothing stays quite the same gently down the stream—whether it’s on ‘Tenderness’ or ongoing work on something entirely unnamed, new & unlanguageable. Extraordinary musician/ sound designer/ kind human.”
Comparing Sterling’s description of their collaboration as “oddly operatic and tragically ecstatic” with Winer’s simile of “like driving a ’71 Riviera in the rain“, we’d have to say that “Tenderness” hews more towards the former – but such is the evocativeness, unpredictability and shapelessness of the piece that you can project just about any dreams onto it. Expanding across eight minutes of percolating beats, luminous synths, seasick strings and eerie atmospherics, “Tenderness” is already a sensory delight – and that’s not even taking into account Winer’s contributions. Speaking in her gorgeously weathered voice, her story unfolds in unsettling images that lead into a thicket of theories. When they’re tied together by Sterling’s production, there seems to be a bigger picture to be deciphered – we’ll just have to keep dipping into “Tenderness” to figure it out, which we’ll gladly do.
Maxwell Sterling’s new album Turn Of Phrase arrives on April 16 via AD 93. You can find him on Bandcamp, Twitter and Instagram.
