Tangents

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, Tangents embrace the self-description “post-everything improv.” Equal parts free jazz, modern classical composition, and electronic idioms such as drum’n’bass keep the ensemble outside conventional pigeonholes. Their spontaneous performances, which draw on anywhere from two to five members, readily juxtapose glitch-laden electronic layers with clattering percussion and taut string passages, as heard throughout the 2021 release Timeslips & Chimeras.

Core contributors comprise Adrian Lim-Klumpes of Triosk on keyboards, marimba, and vibraphone; British duo Icarus member Ollie Bown, an electronic producer; cellist Peter Hollo from FourPlay String Quartet; and both halves of Spartak—drummer Evan Dorrian and guitarist Sia Ahmad. The group began playing together in 2010. Its first album, I, was mastered by Chicago indie and post-rock veteran Casey Rice and issued in 2013 via hellosQuare Recordings/Not Applicable. In 2014 the ensemble produced “Soundtrack to a Walk in the Dark” for the experimental program Ears Have Ears on Sydney’s FBi Radio. The following year Tangents supported Japanese group Mono on dates across Australia and New Zealand.

After that tour the band aligned with Temporary Residence, which brought out the more rhythmically driven and urgent sophomore album Stateless in July 2016; its opening track “Jindabyne” received a remix from Four Tet, whose earlier band Fridge had also appeared on the label. Two years afterward the Stents + Arteries EP paved the way for third full-length New Bodies, which earned an Australian Music Prize nomination. Risk Reaps Reward, an entirely improvised set captured live on Melbourne’s Triple R, surfaced in July 2020 and was followed two months later by the digital issue of studio album Timeslips. Ahmad departed after those projects were completed. In 2021 the earlier Timeslips material was combined with a newly recorded companion album and released in both physical and digital formats as Timeslips & Chimeras.