light.box is the British experimental duo of trumpeter-electronics player-recording engineer-producer Alex Bonney and Canada-born bassist-electronics player-composer-educator ierre Alexandre Tremblay. Eyre is the fourth album of the duo, now augmented with British tenor sax player Tom Challenger (Bonney recorded and mixed albums of Challenger with Kit Downes, Alexander Hawkins and Mark Sanders. Challenger recorded a duo album with Trembly, Twill, Loop, 2022), recorded at City University in London in February 2024. It was mixed by Tremblay, and mastered by Bonney and Tremblay. Bonney took the cover photo.

Eyre captures the first-ever performance of this free improvising trio as it investigates a spectrum of timbres and textures in all its exploratory rawness. This ad-hoc trio relies on the deep rapport that developed over years of playing together in various other projects.

The labrum begins with «Lateral Sway», an intense and restless, electroacoustic collision of sounds, textures and improvisation tactics, with Challenger attempting to discipline the stormy, reverbrating electronics of light.box into a coherent narrative. The four-part suite «Chain Chimes» is introduced by Bonney’s gentle, melodic theme, soon expanded and intensified into a playful free jazz form by Challenger, and then it is processed and mutated by light.box’ subtle electronics. Later on, it morphs into a mysterious, alien ambient drone, but with delicate timbral and microtonal explorations, and only Challnger’s processed breaths floating over the dense soundscape, and eventually it gravitates into post-techno, post-free jazz distorted explosion but with distant, acoustic, lyrical tones of Bonney’s trumpet and Cahllanger’s sax. The last piece «Covalent» concludes this exploratory journey by returning full circle to the layered, electroacoustic collision of sounds of the opening piece.

Eyal Hareuveni

Alex Bonney (trumpet, electronics) Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (bass guitar, electronics), Tom Challenger (tenor saxophone)