Title: Viola
Artist: Asplund, Christian
Label: CD Baby
Product Type: COMPACT DISCS
UPC: 700261255118
Genre: Rock

Christian Asplund is a Utah-based composer-violist-harmoniumist. He has played with Stuart Dempster, Christian Wolff, Eyvind Kang, Willy Winant, Francois Houle, and many others. The press has used the following words to describe Asplund's music: passion, panoramic power, pure pointillist, plaintive, painstaking, rhythmically toothy, rocking, remarkable, rollicking, searing, subdued, soothing, submersive, splendid, unique, enjoyable, ethereal, mesmerizing, mind-blowing, otherworldly, absorbing, intelligent, idiosyncratic, distinctive, captivating, bewitching. Below is a sampling of press comment on Asplund's violism: "Way back in the late '90s... Asplund was a foundation stone of Seattle's avant-music scene. Among other things, he was a cofounder... of the Seattle Experimental Opera, collaborating with his wife/librettist Lara Candland on a series of exquisite and inscrutable theater pieces. And every once in a while, at some gig here or there, he'd burn a hole in your brain with a thrashing speed-metal improvisation-on his viola." Seattle Weekly "Christian Asplund['s] contributions. . . have been nothing short of the b[eatific] child of Jean-Luc Ponty and Leroy Jenkins." The Daily Barometer \'Asplund plays a mean viola, a splendid harmonium and a rock solid piano.\' Andrew Bartlett, The Stranger "[T]he interplay of instruments and the tools the musicians used to pull these sounds out of their instruments (dual rubber bands, for instance, around the "waist" of the viola) was interesting, and I was thoroughly drawn in by the absolute passion the men, especially the violist [Asplund], put into their playing." Karen Ann Webb, The Salt Shaker Eminent composer and performer, Jarrad Powell, has said the following of VIOLA: \'The recording is a stunning investigation of the sounds that a viola can make. There is no distinction between the instrument and the process of recording and manipulation. It all becomes one instrument - organic, expressive, and terrifyingly human.\' Jarrad Powell.

Tracks:
1.1 Daffodils, My Blondines
1.2 I Come a Clement Troubadour
1.3 To Work Your Dirten Bed
1.4 Your Cuplets Brimming
1.5 Your Ermine Soil, It's Viands
1.6 The Hock Upon Your Leaflets
1.7 O Species of Nosegay
1.8 Royal-Blooded Dingle
1.9 Product of Broad Gales and Dim Cradles
1.10 Propitious Visions:
1.11 Before Your Ruddy Necromancy I Am a Blank Balladeer
1.12 Before Your Mitred Bustling Bloom
1.13 My Prolix Verses Fade

Audio Sample:
All soundclips are provided by Tidal and are for illustrative purposes only. For some releases, the tracks listed may not accurately represent the tracks on the physical release.