POWERDOVE - do you burn (2013)

info via circle into squares: "Annie Lewandowski comes from Minnesota, a place full of things that are long and longer: church services, dinner tables, and worry lines, to name a few. Somebody said there are ten thousand lakes there; if that’s true, each of them shows up in some little way in Annie’s songs. She writes under the name powerdove, which began as a band of one in California in  2007. A document of this brief solo era can be found on her EP Live from the Maybeck House (s/r, 2010). Before long, powerdove evolved into three; that trio (with Alex Vittum, percussion, and Jason Hoopes, bass) recorded Be Mine in 2009 (Circle into Square, 2010). 

On her new album, Do you Burn? (March, 2013), many of the songs were written along the scuzzy River Itchen in Hampshire, England, where Annie played concerts and went on the occasional European tour with Curtis McKinney, a laptop composer who uses Supercollider. After this year spent down by the sea, she returned to the US, settling in upstate New York and writing the rest of the material on the new album. When it came time to record, Annie enlisted the help of an old California friend, John Dieterich (Deerhoof), and a new French one, Thomas Bonvalet (L’Ocelle Mare). Three great improvisers, they worked fast. The result lies somewhere near the Marble Index, David Sylvian, Diane Cluck, and the Curtains (of which Annie is a former member). The roughness and fluidity of these tracks owe to their origin in mostly live takes, which have also lent a certain intimacy to every sound: these are little songs to love, but there is also great mystery here, and even menace."

     POWERDOVE - do you burn? (2013)      

L'OCELLE MARE - discography

the solitary project of thomas bonvalet initially focused on the nylon string guitar, taking short, dynamic and abrupt forms and limiting itself exclusively to the acoustic possibilities of the instrument. a radical posture, it constantly threatened to put itself at an impasse, seeing itself forced into metamorphosis and movement. the instrument thus became less and less identifiable. At the periphery it absorbed the sound of objects (metronome, tuning forks...) deviating from their common usage, integrating the breath and the sounds rising from the instrumental gesture, splitting up to reveal a new fleeting form. amplification has also progressively taken an essential part in this new instrumentarium/organism.

serpentement (2012)

engourdissement (2009)

thomas bonvalet lives in alpedrete, spain. he was the guitar player of the band "cheval de frise" between 1998 and 2004, he made his first solo show under the name of l’ocelle mare in september 2005. he toured europe, scandinavia, israel, USA and china.

instruments: mechanical metronome with bell, harmonica reeds, six string banjo, amps, microphones, feet tapping, hand clapping, six string ukulele, tuning forks, timer, mouth organ, harmonicas, concertina, dry poppy pods, whistlings.

porte d'octobre (2008)

l'ocelle mare (2006)