Our recent special guests, experimental supergroup HEY!TONAL is premiering today in its entirety a remastered version of their self titled debut album via Mowno.com. The album will be released for the first time on vinyl on October 8 via conceptual label Computer Students.
Hey!Tonal is the first album by HEY!TONAL, a project helmed by the guitarists, multi-instrumentalists and sound designers Mitch Cheney (Rumah Sakit, Sweep the Leg Johnny) and Alan Mills (Chiisai-oto).
Each member constructed the album instrument-by-instrument between 2006 and 2008 over a vast geographical area from NYC, Chicago, Florida, San Diego and Nantes, France. Main collaborators included Kevin Shea (Storm & Stress), Theo Katsaounis (Joan of Arc), and Dave Davison (Maps & Atlases).
Mitch Cheney initially conceived HEY!TONAL as a project to be called “Drummers’ Perspectives“, and that working title sums up its ethos. He became inspired to write melodies based on the drumbeat being the starting point of the composition, opposed to the other way around. A providential meeting with Alan Mills meant another collaborator would try his hand at the resultant rhythmic and melodic tangle. The basic concept for their compositional process stemmed from Cheney’s experience with television editing. They manipulated all the catalogued sounds as if they were visual elements.
In 2009 the album was released by Africantape in CD format; now Hey!Tonal has been remastered and pressed to vinyl for the first time. It is available for preorder at the following link.
