Archaeopteryx Inspirations Playlist

Our new album has been out for a couple of weeks now, and it has been so great to finally share it with the world. To get a deeper slice into the world of Archaeopteryx, Composer Chris Perren has shared some of the tracks that directly influenced his writing process, and discusses the ways in which each one has left an imprint on the final work.

Vessel - Paplu (Love that Moves the Sun)
I randomly stumbled upon this song after reading the album’s Resident Advisor review. At the time I was writing the first draft of what eventually became “Archaeopteryx”, and struggling to move forward with it. This track smashed me. Its incredible textures, wild metric modulations, and dizzying sense of movement, are all anchored around repetitive rhythmic cells, which get presented within differing rhythmic frameworks that totally transform the way they feel. 

Shugorei - Our Amen
When I first saw Brisbane duo Shugorei live, it felt like I was witnessing an evolution of live music performance. Much of Archaeopteryx was written with live performance in mind, particularly with the aim of making the electronic aspects as engaging and performative as the acoustic. Watching the way Noz and Tom lock in together on these very complex rhythms, each in complete control of their apparatus, it really raised the bar on what I imagined Nonsemble’s performance could look like, and influenced not just how and what I performed on stage on my Ableton Push controller, but also the compositions themselves.

Kate Bush - Cloudbusting
There was a time around 2019 when I listened to this song multiple times daily. Around this time, I was inspired by the way the extreme simplicity of the string lines could convey such emotional weight, and some of this filtered into my writing at the time, perhaps most notably in “Argentavis”. This song came back around during the mixing phase of the album as well, serving as a great reference for the tight, dry, chamber string sound.

Olivier Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time, VI: Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets
This has always been one of my favourite movements of Messiaen’s most famous work, written under unimaginable conditions as a captive of WWII Germany. There’s something really compelling about this frantic unison writing - I find the juxtaposition of complete togetherness of the ensemble with the almost complete unpredictability of the melodies so engaging. When you hear the second track on the album “Phorusrhacos”, I don’t think you’ll have much difficulty hearing the inspiration here.

Perfume Genius - Slip Away
For me, this song captures this incredibly elevated, jubilant abandon. At levels it is very simple (the I-IV progression in the verse), and at other levels it is full of rich detail and complexity (the constantly changing vocal production, that slight mixolydian variation in the back half of the bridge, the sonic textures of the whole thing). There’s a bit of an attempt to reach this heightened jubilation in the climax of Argentavis.

LAU - The Bell That Never Rang
I don’t remember how I first stumbled upon this track, but I heard it with no context and listened to the full 17 minutes thinking, “what on earth is this gloriousness?” Eventually I learnt that LAU are actually a kind of celtic folk type situation, and this track is rather an outlier from them. I did grow to love the rest of their catalogue, too. But this piece is just such a refreshing expression of modern string writing - pushing beyond traditional playing techniques, but never gratuitously - always in service of the sum emotional force of the work. Being a bit of a celtic folk situation there is also a bit of that folk fiddle flavour to the playing, and I just love the freedom and ornamentation of that kind of playing. Harpagornis, the 3rd track on Archaeopteryx, was heavily inspired by this.

Madeleine Cocolas - A Promise
Madeleine is a good friend, collaborator, and work colleague. But before that, I was a fan (and I actually thought she was American…). Anyways, as well as listening to a great deal of her 2020 album “Ithaca” at the time of developing Archaeopteryx, we also made an EP together, so there is also that natural creative osmosis that comes with collaboration. In “Flight Feathers” I try my best to tap into some of Madeleine’s incredible sense of pacing and atmosphere.

Mogwai - Auto Rock 
My Mogwai fandom has been longstanding, and there are particular Mogwai tracks that have stuck with me through the years as compositional benchmarks. Auto Rock is like a masterclass in economy of material. This one, along with other cuts from the long-form slow-build post-rock canon, formed some of the inspiration for opening track Pelagornis.

Bjork - Joga
An everpresent inspiration, Bjork’s music is full of magical textures and masterful composition. This one in particular has always been a touchstone for Nonsemble though, as not only is it amongst the songs we have covered over the years, it’s also just such a wonderful example of combining strings and electronics. So you can imagine it is one that I regularly came back to while developing Archaeopteryx. You’ll hear a bit of Bjork’s inspiration in the earth-shaking percussion and strings combo at the end of Harpagornis.

William Brittelle - Abattoir
I found the whole album, Spiritual America, to be bafflingly, incomprehensibly good. It’s hard to say exactly how or where I took inspiration from this, because… well, some things I listen to and think, “oh that’s a cool trick, I might try something like that in my stuff”. But then there are some things I hear and think, I don’t even know where it would begin to try and create something like this; the skills and techniques required are beyond me. But anyway, I listened to this album about a thousand times around the period of writing Archaeopteryx and was inspired by the richness of the world it creates, the amazing layering of electronic and acoustic elements, and the freewheeling structure of it all. Amazing track, stunning album.

Jon Hopkins - Singularity
I love Jon Hopkins’ command of texture; everything is constantly changing and evolving. Singularity was something I was listening to a bit when I wrote Pelagornis, and so that intense focus on texture and movement has filtered through quite a bit on that track. Also the electronic drums across the album owe a little bit to Jon too, I have to say.