Arthouse disco from Glasgow
Who they?
AMOR are a fusion of the diverse talents of Franz Ferdinand/Yummy Fur drummer Paul Thomson, sound artist and 2012 Turner Prize nominee Luke Fowler, experimental recording artist Richard Youngs and Norwegian jazz double bassist Michael Francis Duch. A mainstay of the city’s outstanding Night School label – also home to Ela Orleans and The Space Lady’s recent reissues – their 2018 debut album ‘Sinking Into A Miracle’ was more than adequately self-described as “a fully-developed treatise on ecstasy and transcendence”.
Why AMOR?
Their sound is a lost transmission from the dancefloor of Studio 54 filtered through a blend of minimal New York no wave, post-punk and early North American proto-house, its rich and enthusiastic fusion of analogue and digital lending a timeless quality. Youngs’ open, hopeful piano chords and delicate falsetto voice are reminiscent of Arthur Russell, while Duch’s deep and crunchily organic bass notes, Thomson’s metronomic playing and Fowler’s bed of synthesised sound brings the music to a perfectly dancefloor-ready simmer.
Tell us more…
A collaboration with the Norwegian improvisational jazz ensemble Lemur, of which Duch is also a member, the just-released ‘AMOR/LEMUR’ EP was born of a Glasgow concert the two meshed groups played in January 2020, and was recorded at the city’s Green Door Studio the very next day. Over four tracks stretching to 30 minutes, the experimentalism of Fowler’s processed field recordings and Thomson’s Javanese gamelan and scrap metal drums resolves itself into a joyous set of psychedelic, improvisational electronica.
The ‘AMOR/LEMUR’ EP is out on Night School
