>En Garde< Is the first single from Puzzle Mutesons debut album. The music was arranged and produced by Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigursson and recorded in the Greenhouse Studios in Iceland. The title track, >En Garde<, pits Puzzles longing against waves of dense strings and jagged rhythm. With it comes the bonus track >Brittle Beak<. En Garde takes an unexpected and unique voice and elevates it out of any easily discernible pocket. Puzzle Muteson could be folk or something completely different - instead he is an intense stranger from the Isle of Wight - at once both familiar and unfamiliar.
Puzzle Muteson is the alter ego of an enigmatic songwriter from the Isle of Wight, rendering his music in a tremulous tenor over a finely spun web of fingerpicked guitar. Born in London, Isle of Dogs, the southern English island provided unexpected shelter for the shuddering transformation into one-man band Puzzle Muteson. His grade-school music teacher was first to recognise his unrivalled vibrato, and a little while later a parade of chance and coincidence led him to inhabit Puzzle Muteson, and start shaping a body of songs. After obsessively listening to Puzzle Muteson's own raw tapes, producer- arranger duo Valgeir Sigur?sson and Nico Muhly nurtured the songs that now inhabit his debut recording En Garde, released via Valgeir's Bedroom Community label.