Bach Artillerie — Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) and Curt Sydnor — share new single & video Canon à la seconde des Variations Goldberg
There’s classical music, and then there’s whatever Bach Artillerie is doing — and honestly, we’re here for all of it. The collaborative project from Curt Sydnor and Greg Saunier of Deerhoof has just dropped their second single, Canon à la seconde des Variations Goldberg, alongside a music video directed by C.C. Mulligan. Their self-titled debut album lands April 24 on Ernest Jenning Record Co., and it’s shaping up to be one of the more genuinely unclassifiable records of the year.
Cannonfire, Synthesizers, and JS Bach Walk Into a Studio…
Sydnor puts it perfectly when he describes the track: “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. This track introduces the cannonfire audio motif that punctuates the record — Greg’s idea. For me it instantly turns the music into a surrealistic mind-movie.”
That’s a pretty good encapsulation of what Bach Artillerie is all about. The album tackles the nine canons from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations and his Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, arranging them for live synthesizers and drums while the concerto movements get a full MIDI reimagining. Think Wendy Carlos, think the Swingle Singers — then think weirder, more syncopated, with actual cannon fire punctuating the mix.
The lead single Canon à la neuvième des Variations Goldberg kicked things off with a live performance video — check that one out below if you missed it.
Stream Canon à la neuvième des Variations Goldberg on all platforms
What’s Really Going On Here
The backstory is as interesting as the music. Sydnor and Saunier tracked the album on March 31, 2025 — immediately following the Big Ears Music Festival — at the Knoxville studio of engineer Jake Smith. Saunier worked directly from Bach’s keyboard notation for his parts, later building out the MIDI arrangements of Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 to round out the record. Sydnor handled musical introductions and transitions, recording live on analog synthesizers, with some arrangements built in the studio and minor overdubs added later.
This isn’t their first collaboration either. The two previously worked together on Sydnor’s 2020 album ‘Deep End Shallow’ and several of Saunier’s keyboard compositions, and were part of a project a decade ago with Yonatan Gat and Mikey Coltun that reimagined Dvořák’s “American” string quartet for improvising rock quartet. Bach Artillerie feels like a natural evolution of all of that.
Sydnor frames the mission beautifully:
“My hope is that the uninitiated listener will be turned on to the infinite possibilities of music that is formally controlled to this almost absurd degree. In the hands of a musician like Bach the immense inward pressure of canonic composition compacts musical expression to produce diamonds upon diamonds upon diamonds.”
And Saunier, ever the experimentalist, describes his entry point into the project:
“I became curious about the warping of Bach time. What if a fast piece were played like a glacier? What if you put the downbeat right where it ought not to be and made the entire piece syncopated? The strange result was that dissonances that normally pass in the twinkling of an eye became freakishly magnified, and in this Rorschach a shadowy undercurrent of pain, of humor, and of revolutionary energy seemed to become audible to me like a whisper.”
‘Bach Artillerie’ — Tracklist
Side A
1. Canon à l’octave des Variations Goldberg
2. Canon à la seconde des Variations Goldberg
3. Canon à la tierce des Variations Goldberg
4. Premier mouvement du Concerto Brandebourgeois №5
5. Canon à la septième des Variations Goldberg
6. Canon à l’unisson des Variations Goldberg
7. Canon à la quarte des Variations Goldberg
Side B
1. Deuxième mouvement du Concerto Brandebourgeois №5
2. Canon à la neuvième des Variations Goldberg
3. Canon à la quinte dans motion contraire et canon à la sixte des Variations Goldberg
4. Troisième mouvement du Concerto Brandebourgeois №5
Catch Them Live
Bach Artillerie will be playing a record release show in Los Angeles on April 22 at 2220 Arts — tickets are on sale now. Before that, catch them in Richmond on April 14 at Révéler. The album drops two days after the LA show on April 24 via Ernest Jenning Record Co. — pre-order it now.
C'mon why don't you leave a comment here