Christopher Willits

With Tiger Flower Circle Sun, his 20th or so album, and second for Ghostly International, hardworking genius Christopher Willits has struck a perfect balance between contemporary experimental and glitch music. The Mills College graduate's perspective on form is unmistakably distinct. His complex processing and programming focuses the feet on the beat, while his guitar creates overarching gestures that tie together long strands of disparate aural information. Simply put, the sum of each track's parts is essentially chaotic, but an instantly recognizable form holds each piece, and the entire album, together. There are moments that bump like bedroom downtempo (evoking Dosh's first album), moments that percolate somewhere between Pink Floyd's "On The Run" and the work of 20th century minimal and experimental composers, and moments of pure, ethereal beauty. The consistent pulse throughout the album is elaborated on in a hundred different ways via percussive sounds, betraying Christopher's Afro-Latin influences, and tonal shifts that never fully resolve, but don't leave you hanging. Tiger Flower Circle Sun is the album to get your classical-loving mom and your jazz-loving cousin into glitch and/or experimental music.