Brian Allen Simon’s Anenon project has slowly grown out from the electronic beat-scene into the freewheeling modern classical universe, taking cues from every crevice of experimental music in the process. The bookends of this progression, 2012’s Inner Hue and 2016’s breakout Petrol, act as counterweights within Anenon’s discography. Petrol is a culmination, a study in the intersection of intelligent dance music and the melodic repetition of minimalist pioneers like Steve Reich. Anenon framed Petrol through the lens of Los Angeles, using freeway noise in the album’s waking moments to set up a quasi-concept album about the inspiration, claustrophobia, excitement, and dread that comes from living in the sprawling metropolis. On Tongue—Petrol’s follow-up—Simon trades in the sounds of bustling intersections and the beat scene experimentalism pioneered at Los Angeles’ avant-club and de facto Brainfeeder lair Low End Theory for the quiet hills of Tuscany, Italy, where he retreated to record this new LP. Tongue is a reflection of this temporary residence: a meditation on the fragile nature of history, a reverie that glides along in quiet, powerful contemplation.
On its surface, Tongue is a pensive, calming collection of songs—a thesis on the Tuscan landscape Simon decamped to in an attempt to distance himself from the incessant mania touching down in America. But like the archaeological studies that unearthed many of the treasures hidden beneath Italy, Tongue is littered with twists and bold accents that unfurl in his topsoil-mix of saxophone, synthesizers, and found sounds. It’s an album infused with history from its early moments of conception, recorded on the third floor of a 16th-century Tuscan home during April of last year.
“Two for C” begins with the sound of rain and a looping synthesizer that mimics the mechanization of a player piano, before Simon’s saxophone enters with layers of breathy notes. The track’s basic structure is all haze and atmosphere, assembling a cloud that eventually parts to reveal ascending synth flourishes and stark, powerful piano chords. “Two for C” is an outline of Simon’s mission: an album untethered to traditional verse-chorus structure that unveils a larger sonic expansion within each song.
“Verso,” the album’s first single, develops in much the same way. Two piano parts interlock and move straight ahead, slowly allowing for the rise of a church choir to enter the mix. Voices and organ blend to move the tone from affirming to downcast, the re-emerging rain sample makes it sound like a dirge. Tongue is drenched in these moments of emotion, bringing humanity to a modern classical genre that can favor studiousness over the feeling of a great cathartic moment. Anenon combines the technical acuity of mid-century minimalist composers with the ecstatic highs of America’s modern experimental scene.
Tongue straddles the line between esoteric and accessible with ease and grace, a trait attributable to Simon’s self-taught style; he first picked up a saxophone at the age of 22. The dense layers of pianos, synthesizers, woodwinds, and field recordings help create a quiet, gorgeous meditation on the world an ocean away from his home and the city that shaped his style. Tongue could read as a desire to separate his name from Petrol and the Los Angeles it reflects. Rather, the album is the perfect follow-up to Simon’s most successful release to date precisely because it’s so far from his previously inhabited world. The electronics are hushed entirely, instead spotlighting the producer’s arranging and songwriting chops. The album is a rigorous exercise, a whispered rumination, a city take on country life by an Angeleno in Italy. The album unfolds and reveals itself like the rolling hills of Tuscany, the outer-reaching moments tempered by Simon’s delicate touch and deft ear. Tongue creates a world built from the snug comfort of rain and the quiet joy that comes from solitude. There’s no place further from Los Angeles.
