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Drummer Ian Chang makes electronic music physical. Using drums to control and manipulate samples, Chang brings human fluidity to a metronomic genre. The result is a seamless marriage of raw performative intensity and sophisticated sound design.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chang was shaped by the city’s diversity and vibrance. He moved to New York in 2007 to pursue music and quickly gained a reputation as a “gigantically talented drummer” (NPR). To date, Chang has recorded and/or performed with such varied artists as Son Lux, Landlady, Joan As Policewoman, Body Language, Matthew Dear, Dave Douglas, Rafiq Bhatia, Rubblebucket and Moses Sumney.

In 2015, Chang started beta testing Sunhouse’s Sensory Percussion. This new technology translates the nuances of drumming into sample-based sound worlds. Through testing and developing Sensory Percussion, he has discovered a new creative voice and is gearing up to release his debut with Kowloon Records in Fall of 2017. The project explores the relationship between human and machine, redefining drumming and electronic music.

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Elegant, articulate, and expansive, Juniper, the new record from instrumental percussion trio Square Peg Round Hole manages to convey – and evoke – an entire range of human emotions despite its lack of a single sung word. “Because we are an instrumental group, our hope is that people connect with the songs and assign their own meanings to them,” says Evan Chapman. ”Without lyrics telling the listener how to feel, it leaves the music as an open-ended question.” A sonic mirror reflectingthe listener’s subconscious emotional state back at themselves, Juniper engages with the fundamental and primeval.

When it came time to write Juniper, the follow up to 2013’s Corners, the group made a conscious effort to compose together as an ensemble. Evan Chapman, Sean M. Gill, and Carlos Pacheco-Perez split writing sessions between a cabin in rural western Maryland and a remote area of Wisconsin called Egg Harbor at farm-turned-music center Birch Creek. “There is a large, resonant space where we performed at Birch Creek called Juniper Hall,” explains Chapman, “which is actually where we came up with the name for the album.”

To put the new songs to tape, the band teamed up with Evan’s brother Justin Chapman. With a battalion’s worth of gear in tow they converted their shared house in Manayunk, PA into a proper, modern recording studio. Listening to Juniper it’s almost impossible to imagine that the bulk of the recording was done live in full takes.

In the years prior to Juniper, the band spent time honing their instrumentation and specific roles within the band. As a result, Juniper feels like it was written holistically, by a cohesive creative unit; drum set, vibes, and Rhodes being the primary sound palette. The band also dove deeper into sampling and analog synthesizers with Juniper, adding further dimensionality and nuance to their work. Together Gill, Pacheco-Perez, the brothers Chapman, and mix engineer Bryan Laurenson (Copeland) created a record that speaks without words, taking listeners on a journey through the self.

The ultimate headphone record, luxurious with the energy of unison drums, or the serenity of bowed vibraphone, and the fascinating timbres of found objects/scrap metals, Juniper is a bold artist statement from a fearless creative force, at once expansive and intimate. “This is a dynamic record, with moments that are heavier, grittier, and faster than we’ve ever written, and others delicate, fragile and introspective,” says Chapman. “We strive to make our music stimulating and intelligent. At the same time, we’ve found that people connect with percussion on a very primitive level, and therefore we think that there is something for all types of listeners on this record.”

Square Peg Round Hole formed in 2011 while studying music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, in Bloomington, Indiana. The band has shared bills with Built To Spill, The Album Leaf, Mae, This Will Destroy You, and The Joy Formidable, and has been featured at major venues across the country including the Electric Factory, Le Poisson Rouge, Old National Centre, and the World Café Live.

Tigue official site |Tigue on Twitter | Tigue on Facebook | Tigue on Instagram | Tigue on Soundcloud

Tigue is a group of three percussionists with a fluid musical identity. The Brooklyn-based trio (Matt Evans, Amy Garapic and Carson Moody) makes their own kinetic and hypnotic blend of instrumental minimalism while opening up the possibilities of their instrumentation through commissioning and collaboration. Tigue’s debut album Peaks was released in 2015 with New Amsterdam Records with highlighted performances at the Ecstatic Music Festival, Bric Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, and the Zemlika Festival in Durbe, Latvia. Recent commissions and premieres have included works by Molly Herron, Randy Gibson, Jason Treuting, Adrian Knight and Robert Honstein alongside collaborative ventures with Kid Millions and visual artist / sculptor Michael Mercil. These works have been presented in concert halls, galleries, black box theaters and universities throughout the country including EMPAC, Roulette, The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Noguchi Museum, Yale School of Music, and Princeton University.  Praised for their focused and “high octane” performances (New York Times), the Ohio-born band members have worked together since they were practically children.

Along with performing, the members of Tigue are dedicated to outreach and community projects. In collaboration with Make Music New York, the trio has led three 10-week music education programs with adult and adolescent inmates at New York City’s Rikers Island Correctional Facility, featured in both the New York Times and Rolling Stone Magazine. Working with inmates in both men’s and women’s facilitates, the trio shared the communicative nature of music through West African musical traditions and hand drumming culminating with inmate performances for the Rikers population.  Tigue has also presented workshops and masterclasses with collegiate universities, elementary classrooms and community groups across the globe.

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This past spring Tigue events included a Carnegie Neighborhood series performance in the Bronx premiering the latest movement of Jason Treuting’s piece 9 numbers, a trip to Boston, MA to perform on the Celebrity Series “Stave Sessions “ with fellow Brooklyn trance inducers Innov Gnawa, the premiere of Randy Gibson’s “The Four Pillars Appearing from The Resonating Discs invoking The 72:81:88 Confluence in a setting of Quadrilateral Starfield Symmetry ATS4 Base 6:81” with the Avant Media Festival, a weekend in Columbus, OH performing the latest version of Michael Mercil’s “Thoreau’s Desk” and a week long workshop and performance of new music for new instruments with composer Molly Herron and instruments designed by Dartmouth College engineering students.

2016 was a busy year for Tigue. The ensemble appeared as part of the Ecstatic Music Festival, Avant Media Festival, American Music Festival, and Celebrate Brooklyn! Festivals where they performed new music of their own along with composers Adrian Knight and Jason Treuting. The group made their first trip to the West Coast, with help from the Permutations Series and the Center for New Music, and they flew to Latvia for their first international performance as part of the Zemlika Festival. In between these projects Tigue played intimate shows with their friends in the Brooklyn community, presented workshops and master classes for elementary school classrooms and ivy league institutions, and started recording their second album. Most recently, this past February, Tigue hosted a three week Sunday night residency at local Gowanus music venue Three’s Brewing, presenting concerts with Brooklyn community talents Alice Cohen, J. Hoard, Qasim Naqvi, LADAMA, Wilder Maker and Innov Gnawa.

Photo Credit: Catalina Kulczar