Leo Hoffsaes - 1-2 (2025)

Léo Hoffsaes is a Paris-based composer working mainly with electric guitar, string instruments, and field recordings.

On this record for Penultimate Press, Hoffsaes is focused exclusively on electric guitar and ways to record it; blending back and forth the physical sound of a supercardioid mic placed just above the strings with a more distant, colder, raw resonance of the plugged guitar. The sound shifts between these two perspectives and is also à l’image du core motif, a slow, deliberate two-note progression (sometimes three), oscillating and moving through the pieces like weary feet struggling with mud, like the push and pull of 1 and 2 in ½. Hoffsaes also made a trombone piece following a similar system of composition.

The tuning includes intervals that approximate simple harmonic ratios and others that follow non-rational frequency relationships. F2 / Ab2 / Bb2 / Ab3 / B3 / Ab3. This set itself shifts slightly, unresolved. Never quite 1, never quite 2.