Bio

Andrew Tuttle is a best-kept secret of the Australian musical underground – a songwriter, composer and improviser who has collaborated with Matmos, Steve Gunn, Charlie Parr, Gwenifer Raymond and many others. Tuttle’s music exists serenely and purposefully in a space where the five-string banjo and the six-string acoustic guitar weave in and out of processed electronics. Like time-lapse photography, it unfolds its colours and textures with an astonishing gracefulness and wonderment.

Fleeting Adventure, Tuttle’s fifth solo album, is a musical adventure through a reimagined journey from the Australian ambient producer and banjo player. Released on 29 July 2022 via Mistletone (AUS/NZ) and Basin Rock (ROW), a crew of fellow travellers – including Steve Gunn, Chuck Johnson, Luke Schneider and Balmorhea – help navigate a cosmic trip into subtropical landscapes.

Golden plucks of banjo, gauzy electronics and cosmic guitar shimmer into gloriously expansive melodies that conjure peace and space, comfort and wonder.

Over four earlier solo albums released by the Room40 label family, Tuttle’s release and touring schedule has included performances in revered Australian and European spaces including Melbourne Recital Centre, Cafe OTO (London), The Tivoli (Brisbane), Paradiso Noord (Amsterdam), MONA (Hobart), Botanique (Bruxelles) and Galeria ZDB (Lisboa).

(photo credit: Naomi Lee Beveridge)

SELECTED PRESS

• MOJO (4*): “Joyful and full of subtle vigour, it’s the perfect headphone-heard walking companion when you don’t want lyrics crowding your thoughts.”
• Uncut: (4*): “…the results aren’t simply a wonder of modern technology. They’re downright miraculous.”
• The Guardian (4*): “Entirely instrumental, it’s essentially a soundscape driven and shaped by Tuttle’s artful, melodic banjo, but set amid a widescreen wash of electronica, guitar, violin and more.”
• The Quietus: “In each composition, there’s an unwavering cinematic quality in the crispness of the production and the ease in which the arrangements flow.”
• Pitchfork: “On paper, an ambient banjo record might sound absurd, pretentious, or maybe even a little silly. But in execution, Tuttle blends these disparate influences smoothly and cinematically.”
• The Times (4*): “Tuttle is an Australian banjo player who has put his instrument’s Americana cadences into an ambient, spacious setting, and the result is like a soundtrack to the desert at night: awe-inspiring and somehow optimistic.”
• Raven Sings The Blues: “There’s a natural awe to the album, that’s expressed between the patient notes that Andrew and his collaborators concoct.”
• The Line Of Best Fit (8/10): “Banjo. Mention of this five letter word is most likely to induce unflattering images of Deliverance-type backwoods hoedowns or hordes of beige-hued blandness merchants attempting to instill a drop of authenticity to their faux Americana. Andrew Tuttle is on course for correcting this image problem.”
• Folk Radio: “Using his guitar and banjo, he dispels any notion of staying within the norms of most recording artists, boldly blending strings, horns and synths in the unlikeliest of ways.”
• Boomkat: “Beautifully serene widescreen vistas from Andrew Tuttle… This one’s on a sun-bleached and countrified tip somewhere between Calexico instrumentals, The Hired Hand OST and Brian Eno’s ‘Another Green World’.”
• The Moderns: “Andrew Tuttle continues to push the limits of ambient guitar music: this time out he adds banjo, fiddle, sax, trumpet, cello and more, all to great effect.”
• AllMusic: “His tones are sharp but rarely abrasive, and he applies a stunning array of effects and filters while retaining the music’s earthly, human qualities.”
• Flush The Fashion: “Andrew’s album is one of these creative passports that will take you to new places that you never knew existed. That’s not a bad start to the week, or the rest of your life.”
• Textura: “…the meeting between analog and digital worlds: acoustic folk, in the form of picking, strums, and tremolo-laden shudder, and kosmische psychedelia, in the form of synthesizer burble that flows constantly through Tuttle’s tracks.”
• Dying For Bad Music: “I never thought there is something cosmic in banjo based music, but Andrew Tuttle proved me wrong.”