Handles

"Handles", Drexler's debut album, is inspired by new beginnings and ideas of rebirth. The music infuses intimate chamber strings with tender piano tones, ambient synth, minimal percussion, and folky guitars. Drexler adds to this instrumentation by manipulating sound using production techniques, delays, and experimenting with acoustic spaces.

The album incorporates field recordings from Drexler's travels across the globe. These include the gentle flickering sounds from Lake Kawaguchi in Japan, native birds and burning embers from a countryside campfire in New South Wales, Australia, and the rattling hum of a London tube.

Recorded in small spaces—predominantly in Drexler's studio in North West London—the work focuses on recording granular sonic details like the hair of the violin bow slowly draped across the bridge, the hammers of the piano hitting the felt above the strings, the textures of shimmering electric guitars or the sounds of a fire engine passing in the distance.

The work is a stunning debut of modern-classical fusion, displaying musical elements and influences that spill from one genre to another: we can hear components of neoclassical, ambient, electronic, and folk, all of these adding together to create something very unique.