The Orielles: Turning randomness into fine art

Their fourth album, Tableau, due out this week, shows just how far they have progressed.

An adventurous collection of songs and interludes, it embraces holistic jazz practices, leftfield 21st century electronica, experimental 1960s tape loop methods, otherworldly AutoTuned vocal sounds, the haunted dubstep of Burial, the No Wave experiments of Sonic Youth and the Oblique Strategies cards of Brian Eno.

Indeed so bold a step is the double album, Sidonie chucklingly admits there was some nervousness at their record label, Heavenly, when she, Esme and their longtime friend Henry Carlyle-Wade first suggested its concept and sent them “some live recordings of long, 20-minute jams that were completely instrumental and not very good”.

“There we go, they trusted what they heard, I guess, and we were super grateful they gave us the opportunity to go and show what we could do,” she says.

The trio compiled a long and eclectic playlist that they hoped would inspire them on the drive from their base in Manchester to the studio in Eastbourne where they recorded Tableau. “We all contributed and put stuff in there,” says Sidonie. “It was everything and anything from lover’s rock dub music to really contemporary hip-hop and trap and (older influences like) Sonic Youth and Stereolab.”

During lockdown, they were asked to curate a monthly show for Soho Radio which also became a place for research and development of ideas. Drummer Sidonie says: “It was an opportunity for us to spend more money and buy more records, but it also meant when the three of us got together once a month to play each other what we’d been listening to for the past month. That certainly sparked the creativity within us because we were listening to a lot more contemporary electronic music than we had done in the past. Just having that space to talk with one another and share influences was really special. A lot of the album was first conceived not in musical form but more in ideas and impressions that we shared with one another.”

While assembling ideas they employed the “Goyt method”, a form of shorthand with their engineer Joel Patchett which they’d previously used while editing material for remixes for other artists at a studio in the Goyt Valley. “On a more basic level it's inspired by a lot of Pauline Oliveros (the US experimental composer) and Brian Eno’s kind of work, almost tapping into cybernetics and computers becoming a popular way to record and produce music and the randomness that comes with that. Essentially putting something which is human into a robot and letting that randomness take place, and the result is something different.”

Sidonie’s research into the graphic notation system devised by the American free-jazz trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith also came into play during their recording, along with Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards which they found chimed with “this idea of improvisation and chance and randomness”. “Using these cards meant that every single take of a song was different because it definitely got to a point where we took them quite seriously,” she says. “Before each take we would each pick a card and whatever that card suggested would be how we would perform.

"Halfway through the record there’s a track called Darkened Corners and there’s a chaotic breakout part with the drums where we wanted to humanise the drums, in a sense, and make them a character in that song and have this tension where there are beats that are flipping out but it gets to this moment where everything just becomes loose and more free. I think my particular card on that take was ‘Lose all structure’ – that certainly helped.

“The graphic score element was something that I had been getting into. Seeing Wadada’s scores, I was really into them not only as a form of improvisation but also visually I was really interested in them. It reminded me a lot of Miro’s stuff. I loved them straight off the bat and then said to Es and Henry do you want to have a go at doing something like this in the studio? One of us drawing up something then us all interpreting that and playing it. We did it with the song Beam/s, there’s an arpeggiated modular synth running throughout the whole of the track and we drew a graphic score for Joel to follow to modulate the synth then we would play acoustic instruments in the next room.

“Initially we toyed with it being a more reactionary thing where Joel would react on our movements but it worked so well him following the graphic score so we kept that.”

For all the high concepts, the album does include a few more straightforward pop songs such as Airtight. “We’re all into such a varied palette of music that I don’t think we would ever be restricted to one particular tone on a record. This is us really,” Sidonie says. “We throw all our ideas at the wall and see what sticks.

"Particularly growing up listening to a lot of pop music and structures, and punk music as well, meant that way of writing hooky melodies has always been intrinsically there as well, we just like to divert from it from time to time.”

The band see Tableau as an album that’s intended to be listened to from beginning to end. “As an artist, that’s always the aim,” says Sidonie. “We’re into film and art and creating structural arcs and moments of tension and release within our work is something we’ve always been conscious of doing. Listening to a record from start to end is something I do, and Esme and Henry as well. To fully digest a piece of work you’ve got to listen to the full thing in order.”

Having said that, she concedes: “This record is quite different and goes through a few different styles and genres that I could also see making sense in multiple orders or not necessarily following it through. The A-side is a lot more free flowing anyway so that makes sense to at least listen to that first section in order because the songs flow into one another and that’s how we played them in the studio as well.”

Sidonie says the band are “really excited” about two orchestral shows that they are playing at Stoller Hall in Manchester on October 7 and EartH in London on October 8, adding: “To get the strings on the record was a milestone moment, a dream come true, so then to have them join us for a few shows as well is so exciting.”

In March and April 2023 they will play a more conventional tour of the UK. “Hopefully we will get some European dates locked in as well,” Sidonie says.

Tableau is out on Friday October 7. https://www.theorielles.co.uk/