Petrified in the creative process and preserved, not unlike the remains of Pompeii illustrating the artwork, the various recordings from Addendum I & II are presented as Sweet Gum Tree's first two volumes of collected rarities and previously unreleased material, spanning two decades. Outlining his discographic jigsaw, those sonic vignettes especially bring the guitarchitect and the songsmith out in the Gallic dandy. With floydian intro Saturn Square Saturn, Sweet Gum Tree sustains the mood of previous effort Silvatica, critically-acclaimed in France and featured in recent best-selling book 1,000 Essential Rock Albums (from 1956 to 2022). From the cosmic pop of Incandescent and the luminous melancholy of Snowflake in the Sun to hushed jam session City of Glass, Addendum I & II reward the attentive listener with their sense of detail and intimate atmosphere. Taking his poetic material on a cinematic journey through Europe's art-rock lineage since the late noughties saw the demise of his former band Sojo Glider, the man behind Sweet Gum Tree has played a couple of hundred shows in eight countries, and released a handful of records, collaborating with such luminaries as Isobel Campbell, Heather Nova, Earl Harvin (Tindersticks), Marty Willson-Piper (The Church), Ken Stringfellow (The Posies) and more recently Ed Harcourt. With his smoky, sensual voice and romantic presence, Arno Sojo embodies a distinctive kind of elegance which has led critics to draw flattering comparisons, from Elliott Smith to David Sylvian. Drifting further leftfield from the song form into cinematic soundscapes, Arno Sojo reasserts his natural inclination for nuance, mood and texture, cultivating his own aesthetic in a beautiful collision of the intimate sphere and the wide open space. 

(photo credit : Anne Marzeliere)