Drew Wesely is a guitarist, composer, and improvisor based out of Brooklyn, NY. His music explores the intersection between noise and pitch running the gamut from ferocious energy and abstracted lyricism to repetition, space, and minimalism. His compositions aim to create dynamic, self-perpetuating musical spaces which embrace players’ idiosyncrasies and allow the music to grow from itself organically while maintaining a unique intensity. In recent years he has established himself as a unique member of the Brooklyn improvised music community performing and recording with Joe Morris, Ingrid Laubrock, William Parker, Francisco Mela, Ralph Alessi, Tom Rainey, Joe Moffett, Eli Wallace, Joanna Mattrey, Carlo Costa, Sean Ali, Hery Paz, Lester St. Louis, and many others.
Drew Wesely – guitarist, improvisor, composer
Hypersurface by Hypersurface, Bandcamp, 2022 on #neuguitars #blog
▶︎hypersurface | hypersurface | Drew Wesely (bandcamp.com)
sound has its own life
impersonal/universal; intimate/immediate
we are told it comes from outside ourselves as vibrations traveling through the air
but our bodies are made of vibrations
resonant telepathic communion
language without concepts
we experience sound inside ourselves
hypersurface began one afternoon in a brooklyn apartment at the end of 2018. the music had a certain vitality and freedom to it that was immediately palpable. it seemed to flow from itself with a kind of transparency that didn’t necessitate any particular sound to be maintained or sustained as a role in the overall texture but, rather, allowed for collective interdependent phrases to come in and out of focus creating a modular effect in which multiple levels of timbre, density, and rhythmic activity are available at any given moment.
this debut recording was made in the summer of 2019 in a surplus warehouse in south brooklyn engineered, mixed, and mastered by nathaniel morgan.
drew wesely – guitar/objects
lester st. louis – cello
carlo costa – percussion
words on hypersurface
Hypersurface, the trio of three excellent young luminaries Drew Wesley (guitar), Lester St. Louis (cello), and Carlo Costa (percussion), immediately struck me as a fresh articulation in this lineage [a mentality that oscillates its resemblances between the post-Cage / Darmstadt continuum of New Music, and the DIY noise scene of the American underground]. The pieces on this disc emerged from home recordings dating back to the end of 2018, and despite the doubtless frigid temperature outside, there is something almost sweaty in the level of straining physicality here. Each player employs preparations and extended timbralities with refined pressure and patient insistence. The liner notes from this tastefully simple self-release read “..our bodies are made of vibrations/resonant telepathic communion/language without concepts/we experience sound inside ourselves.” It is within this spirit of meditation on the nature of boundaries and communication that the improvisation practice is reaching a deeper level of spiritual and aesthetic utility, while also producing a welcoming and investigative experience that invites many deep listens. – Frank Meadows (Downtown Music Gallery)
“Over the course of five tracks, varying in length from less than three minutes to nineteen-plus, we observe a number of unhurried metamorphoses of electroacoustic substances. Employing the slightest overtones of the textural array at their disposal, the players superimpose instances of micro-sonic energy, modulated feedback, unobtrusive resonance and the simultaneous flow of all components into non-permanent droning coherence….. In no way is there any tendency to the promotion of the self, each instrumental voice aimed at communal coalescence rather than individualistic emancipation. This album is a prime illustration of what the artists identify as “resonant telepathic communion/language without concepts“. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” – Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)
“Drew Wesely, Lester St. Louis and Carlo Costa have made an important and beautiful recording. Each track on Hypersurface unfolds as a series of exciting and vivid sonic surprises that result in richly rewarding complexity. This music is rare, virtuosic and ultra contemporary . A great example of how skillful, creative, daringly innovative musicians can use improvisation to make new music that could never be made another way.” – Joe Morris
credits
released February 18, 2022
NeuGuitars 