In early 2016 Markus Reuter was invited to a session at casa Murada Studio in Spain. One year later “THE STONEHOUSE” is finally released. The album features two of today’s most original, ingenious and decidedly “risk taking” electric guitar proponents, easily among the instrument’s most vital new voices: the UK’s Mark Wingfield (Jane Chapman; solo artist, and; one half of the long-running guitar duo, with acoustic maestro, Kevin Kastning), and Germany’s Markus Reuter in the AU8 (Stick Men; The Crimson ProjeKct; Centrozoon).
Each, in their own unique way, has been stretching the bounds of the tonal and texutral limitations of the instrument, and, in the process, has respectively developed their own individual techniques, stylistic approaches and idiosyncratic vocabularies.
Accompanied by the sure-footed foundational tandem of the Israeli-born UK transplants, bassist Yaron Stavi (David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera, Robert Wyatt, Richard Galliano) and drummer Asaf Sirkis (Tim Garland, Mark Wingfield, Nicolas Meier) – a familiar pair, who by all appearances are more than capable of making most anything groove infectiously, and in perfect cadence – the album incorporates many of the elements which have drawn listeners to progressive music for decades. Not only is the album often a canvas hosting a grand experiment in spontaneous group interaction, but it is also an exploration into the tonal and textural possibilities of all the instruments involved. The resulting picture which takes shape is one where the whole is much greater than the sum of its profound parts, and emotion, above all, emerges victorious.
