CCMusic.com

Music for Wood and Strings is the official follow-up to Bryce Dessner's 2013 solo debut Ahyem. But don't call this a solo record. In some ways, this is the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of new music-the meeting of three great musical entities that sound even better together. ONE: Bryce Dessner composed the piece. Best known as a guitarist and songwriter in The National, he is increasingly renown for his work as a collaborator with artists ranging from Steve Reich to Sufjan Stevens, and as a curator on all-star projects exploring the links between the worlds of composed, folk and indie rock music (i.e. Red Hot's Dark Was The Night, Brassland's recently released compilation MusicNOW: 10 Years, the Barbican's Mountains & Waves festival). TWO: So Percussion performed it. A Brooklyn-based percussion quartet, the group has a decade plus track record as serial collaborators with artists across the indie, electronic and classical music spectrum (i.e. Matmos, Dan Deacon, Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang). The New Yorker has praised them for their "exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam." THREE: Aron Sanchez of the duo Buke and Gase built the Chordstick, the original instruments upon which the music was made. These instruments-designed in collaboration with Bryce-are a cross between a hammer dulcimer and an electric guitar, lending the album it's uniquely electrified and various soundscape- pointillist then hazy, distorted then crisp, shifting at will between a hum and a roar and always hypnotic, melodic and engrossing.