Need More Sources

Not much is known about Need More Sources' Chris Stewart, which is just fine. On his debut album Shed, Stewart makes music that stands at the intersection of folk, electronica and avant-garde classical—bedroom symphonies in which synths, strings, piano, acoustic guitar and percussion blur into one another like shapes in a grainy photograph. To reveal too much about his techniques would be to undermine the simple, hypnotic beauty of his compositions, which owe as much to Steve Reich and Ryuichi Sakamoto as they do to fellow digital-analog mixologists like Boards of Canada and Talkdemonic.

Each of Shed's ten pieces has a single-word title evocative of landscape, weather and seasonal shifts: "Morning," "Autumn," "Snow," "Valley." Many unfold exactly as you'd expect; on "Breeze," for example, minimalist electronics brush quietly against the ambient noises of tinkling wind chimes and what might be the creaking of an old porch swing. Other tracks catch you off guard: "Storm" begins quietly with looping, Philip Glass strings before building to a sense of relentlessness with a throbbing bassline and live drums, while "Rain" evokes its subject matter through a tangle of plucked acoustic guitars and solemn strings that could have been lifted from Copland's "Appalachian Spring." Although Shed is rarely dazzling, it's never less than mesmerizing, which is a rare accomplishment for any maker of music this ambient and subdued.

—Andy Hermann
07.17.07

Having performed with the Boats, Chris Stewart veers into a solo tack with Need More Sources, a contemplative instrumental act that creates a delicate series of songs on the debut album Shed. Nearly everything about the release emphasizes calm understatement -- even the dramatic imagery of what appears to be angels fighting on the front cover is partially obscured by layers of paper and color -- and from the start, with the lengthy, slowly unfolding "Morning," tones and a basic core melody added to later by further textures and what sounds like a violin, that atmosphere is established and maintained. Though on his own, Stewart does a very good job at making a one-man-band; songs like "Storm," with its steady, subtle drumming, and the equally striking "Valley," where the beats build up into a near wallop as keyboards and strings interweave and rise, feel like full live performances done very well indeed. A good majority of the tracks are piano-led, and comparisons to a variety of modern classical and ambient performers are understandable, given Stewart's embrace of the style if not always of the particular songwriting approach -- if anything some pieces suggest the experiments on the instrument that Vini Reilly has occasionally recorded, while others, such as "Autumn," parallel some of the work of Piano Magic at their most serene and elegiac. Certainly "Rain" seems to define that latter term, at once a beautiful celebration and a mournful reflection in its combination of bowed and plucked strings (or samples thereof). Touches from more recent developments are subtle but present -- the jittery, shifting crackle of percussion on "Snow" and toward the end of "Spring" isn't necessarily glitch but isn't too far removed, either. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide