Music For Wood And Strings

Music for Wood and Strings is the official follow-up to Bryce Dessner's 2013 solo debut Ahyem. But don't call this a solo record. Rather it is the meeting of three great musical entities that sound even better together.

ONE: Bryce Dessner wrote the piece. Best known as a guitarist and songwriter in The National, he is increasingly renown for his work as a composer and collaborator with artists ranging from Steve Reich to Sufjan Stevens, and as a curator on all-star projects exploring the links between the worlds of composed, folk and indie rock music.

TWO: So Percussion performed it. A Brooklyn-based percussion quartet, the group has a decade plus track record as serial collaborators with artists across the indie, electronic and classical music spectrum (i.e. Matmos, Dan Deacon, Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang).

THREE: Aron Sanchez of the duo Buke and Gase built the Chordstick, the original instruments upon which the music was made. These instruments -- designed in collaboration with Bryce -- are a cross between a hammer dulcimer and an electric guitar, lending the album its uniquely electrified and various soundscape: pointillist then hazy, distorted then crisp, shifting at will between a hum and a roar and always hypnotic, melodic and engrossing.

Weighing in at 35 minutes in length, "Music for Wood and Strings" is the most ambitious piece of music Dessner has released to date.