Tenonsaw is a Swedish-Irish duo with the members Salt Eriksson and Thomas Luke. In the Autumn they first released the debut album “Beginnings”, and later, in November, the EP “Pact”. It’s not that easy to describe their music and I can’t really find any close comparisons among other artists.

The foundation, and what they also started with, is folk music; melancholic and with Tom’s acoustic guitar accompanying Salt’s sad song melodies. Soon, electronica, guitar figures and other sounds add new layers in a minimalistic way. Scales clashes with other scales and new layers add other types of emotions, which sometimes create slightly chaotic situations where there are no rules. They describe the ambition themselves:

…create emotional songbased music, based on the principle on finding the balance between clarity and confusion and between ugliness and beauty.

There is a large span between the songs, where they sometimes lie very close to folk music tunes and sometimes have left it completely behind. You can listen to the title track from the EP here below, and the rest of the songs are available on their Bandcamp page. You can find the duo on their site and on Facebook.

The name Tenonsaw they found in a dictionary while looking for a suitable band name. They liked the association with sharpness and details, and that it’s a small saw, not a big dangerous one.

Pact