For Immediate Release Please
RARE NOISE
TO RELEASE TWO NEW RECORDINGS
IN APRIL
|
JAMIE SAFT AND JOE MORRIS
JOIN FORCES ONCE AGAIN FOR SONIC MAYHEM ON
RARE NOISE RELEASE
PLYMOUTH
AVAILABLE IN STORES AND ONLINE APRIL 7, 2014
AND THROUGH RARE NOISE RECORDS
ON CD, VINYL AND HI-RES DIGITAL DOWNLOAD
VINYL PRE-ORDERS TO START IN EARLY MARCH.
VIDEO BELOW.
Jamie Saft
|
Organ, Echoplex Piano, Fender Rhodes
|
Joe Morris
|
Electric Guitar
|
Chris Lightcap
|
Electric Bass
|
Gerald Cleaver
|
Drums
|
Mary Halvorson
|
Electric Guitar
|
ABOUT THE LABEL - RareNoiseRecords
was founded in late 2008 by two Italians, guitarist /arranger/ producer
Eraldo Bernocchi and all-round music nut Giacomo Bruzzo. Located in
London, the label was created to present a platform to musicians and
listeners alike who think beyond musical boundaries of genre. For
further information and to listen please go to www.rarenoiserecords.com or http://www.rarenoiserecords.com/plymouth
New York, March 11, 2014 - Following on the heels of their successful collaboration on 2013's Slobber Pup, one of the most intensely throbbing releases in the RareNoise catalog, keyboardist Jamie Saft and guitarist Joe Morris have reunited for another potent and provocative offering in Plymouth.
Joining them on the three expansive pieces that comprise this purely
improvised set are the indelible rhythm tandem of bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Gerald Cleaver,
who have played together in various settings (including Morris'
quartet) since the late '90s, and rising star avant garde guitarist Mary Halvorson (a former student of Morris').
Together
they create compelling stream-of-conscious sonic excursions that range
from zen-like quietude to hellacious distortion-laced fury, as on the
20-minute "Manomet," the 13-minute "Plimouth" (no typo) and the
29-minute journey, "Standish." Nothing is ever predictable or resolves
neatly on this audacious, wildly uncompromising outing, scheduled for an
April release on London-based RareNoise Records.
Down Beat writer John Ephland reviewed Plymouth's
U.S. debut on a special RareNoise label showcase held at Shapeshifter
lab in Brooklyn on Dec. 13, 2013: "Beginning with a dose of dreamy
electric piano, Plymouth brought on a storm of floating, shimmering
rubato. The playing centered around a gently implied beat. Halvorson's
guitar work started with deft, unobtrusive slide playing, which provided
a contrast to Morris' more dedicated single-note lines. Saft's chimey
chords directed the music into a loose-limbed rock cadence, while
Morris' hard-edged picking served as a drone. Halvorson replied with
lush chordal phrases, while Saft's scary-movie organ lines were a
lattice for what became a two-note jam of squirrelly lines, repeated
over and over. Saft continued with dense thickets of sound combined with
repeated loops and pedal effects from both guitarists. By this point,
there was an audible heaving and sighing over a definite groove,
menacing but also somehow innocent. The group improvisation could be
heard as a collection of voices-five individuals foraging through a
forest of sounds."
That
same collective search can be readily heard on the group's entrancing
self-titled debut for RareNoise. "This group was conceived as a way to
bring together Joe Morris and Mary Halvorson with a rhythm section of
long standing friends and colleagues," explains Saft, who co-produced
the recording with Morris. "It's a very different sound than Slobber Pup
but created with a similar attitude and focus on total freedom. Nothing
was pre-conceived or discussed beforehand. It's purely a meeting of
sympathetic minds that resulted in something quite astonishing."
While
Saft's keyboard rig in the crunching quartet Slobber Pup is mostly
organs running through a Marshall amp turned up to 11, his setup in Plymouth is
based around the acoustic piano fed through an Echoplex (like on his
own dub-influenced New Zion Trio). Morris and Halvorson interact
intuitive on guitar, alternately between clean tones and distortion
tones, with Halvorson also supplying some of her signature chordal
swells with her deft use of a Whammy Bar pedal.
Chris
Lightcap, who almost exclusively plays upright bass in his own group
Bigmouth and in his numerous sideman roles, plays a hollowbody electric
bass with a fuzz pedal on this Plymouth session. And Cleaver, a
remarkably flexible and powerful drummer, provides the glue that holds
all the freewheeling excursions together. "I absolutely love playing
with Gerald," says Saft. "He is the rare marriage of power, depth and
complete freedom. Gerald frames all the madness with an acoustic sound
that is extra rich and complements all the electrical energy perfectly."
With no plan whatsoever, no lead sheets or sketches or even conversations about what they would play, the members of Plymouth
went into the studio, pressed the record button and created on the
spot. "Nothing was preconceived," says Saft. "Sonically each musician in
this ensemble has such a clear voice and after years of playing
together we can great straight to the intuitive true collective
improvising. No boring repetition, no licks. Purely deep listening and
mutual trust." Adds Morris, "I think it was just a matter of thinking
about a group of people who could bring unique things and work together
well. And what we came up with is really interesting and different."
Says
Morris of his former student Halvorson, "Mary is a great guitarist. She
and I share some ideas and so we have always sounded good together.
She's a great person who is really easy to work with too. And she does
unique things in the way she plays lines, uses effects and builds form."
Morris has equal praise for drummer Cleaver, who previously appeared on
two Morris quartet recordings, 1999's Underthru and 2000's At the Old Office.
"I don't know of anyone who plays like Gerald. He's a deep and serious
artist of the drums who is always changing, and he likes the unknown, he
thrives on that. He adds something strong and unique to every situation
he's in. He's a great, original drummer. So asking him to work in a
situation that is seeking the new and unknown just makes sense. He
thrives in that kind of thing and gives us all a new framework to play
in."
The veteran guitarist also has had a longstanding relationship with bassist Lightcap, who appeared on Morris' 1998 recording, A Cloud of Black Birds, and his subsequent two quartet outings, 1999's Underthru and 2000's At the Old Office.
"Chris is a great bassist who doesn't play electric enough, but that
was his first instrument. He gets a different sound on it than anyone
and does different things with it. We wanted different and good
listening and spontaneous formulation for this session, so we knew we
needed Chris. Also, he and Gerald go way back. They've been playing
together longer than all of us and they have an instant chemistry which
was very important to this recording."
Saft,
who has long been associated with many of John Zorn's ensembles
including The Dreamers and Electric Masada and has also toured and
recorded with the pioneering Japanese noise musician Merzbow, heaped
praise on his Plymouth partner Morris, a free jazz guitar icon
with more than 20 releases as a leader to his credit. "I've known Joe
for over 20 years," says Saft. "We made music together in the early '90s
in Boston when I was finishing up as a student at New England
Conservatory. Joe was a local avant legend and I was extremely fortunate
to get to work with him back then. We lost touch for almost 20 years
and reconnected at some festivals a few years ago and started
brainstorming."
Their brainstorming sessions eventually led to 2011's XYX by The Spanish Donkey, a powerhouse trio featuring drummer Mike Pride, and to last year's Slobber Pup,
which also featured electric bassist Trevor Dunn and the powerhouse
Hungarian hardcore drummer Balazs Pandi (Obake, Metallic Taste of Blood,
Merzbow, Otto Von Shirach, Venetian Snares). Now the two immensely
talented and wide-open musicians take things into an entirely different
zone on their latest purely improvised sonic adventure, Plymouth.
TRACKS
- Manomet
- Plimouth
- Standish
|
ITALIAN TRIO
CHAT NOIR
STRETCHES OUT ON DARING
RARE NOISE DEBUT
Elec3Cities
AVAILABLE IN STORES AND ONLINE APRIL 7, 2014
AND THROUGH RARE NOISE RECORDS
ON CD, VINYL AND HI-RES DIGITAL DOWNLOAD.
VINYL PRE-ORDERS TO START IN EARLY MARCH.
VIDEO BELOW.
Michele Cavallari
|
Piano, Keys, FX
|
Luca Fogagnolo
|
E-Bass, Upright Bass, Guitars, FX
|
Giuliano Ferrari
|
Drums, FX
|
ABOUT THE LABEL - RareNoiseRecords was founded in late 2008 by two Italians, guitarist/arranger/ producer Eraldo Bernocchi and all-round music nut Giacomo Bruzzo.
Located in London, the label was created to present a platform to
musicians and listeners alike who think beyond musical boundaries of
genre. For further information and to listen please go to www.rarenoiserecords.com or http://www.rarenoiserecords.com/chat-noir
New York, March 11, 2014 -
By organically blending elements of electronica and ambient music with
bits of chamber music and jazz, the innovative trio of pianist Michele
Cavallari, bassist Luca Fogagnolo and drummer Guiliano Ferrari has come
up with a wholly unique sound onElec3Cities that may establish a
daring new direction for the piano trio. This delicate balance of
electronic experimentalism and acoustic piano jazz has been evolving
gradually from the group's initial release in 2006, Adoption, and continued on 2007's Decoupage through 2008's Difficult to See You and 2011's acclaimed Weather Forecasting Stone. But the three Italian musicians take it to a wholly new level on Elec3Cities, their most overtly experimental outing to date and debut for the London-based RareNoise label.
"Experimentation
has always been a fundamental part of our work, in the past as well as
now," says bassist Fogagnolo. "We'd describe our journey as a ship
adrift. If jazz was our starting point we've always felt free to explore
different languages. So for us, Elec3Cities does not feel like a
conceptual leap since we have been gradually incorporating electronic
manipulation of acoustic sounds into our music all along. The unique
circumstance of the three of us being in three different cities during
the recording of this project created an opportunity for us to more
extensively use electronic sounds as a common language."
By
creating their fifth album in a 'virtual studio,' the three members of
Chat Noir showed that they are right on the cutting edge of recording
technology. Indeed, the methods used in putting Elec3Cities
together didn't even exist five year ago. As Fogagnalo explains, "The
album was entirely developed by exchanging music session through a
cloud-based system. So although the album is based on the usual three
pillars - piano, bass and drums - the novel recording approach allowed
us to have more time to devote to paying attention to small details. We
could experiment a lot more in the post-production phase to manipulate
the sounds and tracks. We had time to craft our work according to the
original concept that we had for it, as well as ample time for it to
take on a new form after multiple exchanges of ideas among the three of
us."
The
resulting sound of this expansive, genre-defying project is at times
powerfully cinematic ("Avant Buddha") or delicately balladic ("Chelsea
High Line"), dreamily evocative ("Pearls"), minimalist and ambient
("Aspekt") or bombastic and rhythmically charged ("Radio Show").
Surprises abound within each instrumental journey, whether it's the
sonic excursion on "Peaceful," which builds from ruminative solo piano
to throbbing crescendo, or the dramatic "Our Hearts Have Been Bombed,"
which travels from zen-like minimalism to provocative dub-noise
passages.
Says
Fogagnolo "Some of the tunes came from an idea that was well defined
from the beginning, like 'Ninth' and 'Chelsea High Line.' Some others
tunes grew from smaller fragments through collective work. We'd say that
each tune is the result of cooperative energies. Given the
multi-layered nature of the recording process that we adopted for this
album, most of the ideas and sounds were inspired by a three-way
conversion. Adding just even a sound or a single track could in fact
generate more ideas and contribute to the final shape of each tune."
The
individual members of Chat Noir attribute their collective chemistry to
the 10-plus years that they have spent on the bandstand and in the
studio together. Their immediate simpatico, which is apparent on all the
tracks to Elec3Cities, is also what allowed them to record under
such unorthodox circumstances. Even though they were in three different
cities for this recording, their musical rapport is still very much
present in these eight provocative tracks which are brimming with a
universe of sound.
While
the core of Chat Noir may have come from a modern jazz piano trio
setting, somewhat along the lines of E.S.T. or the Bad Plus, Fogagnolo
maintains that there is very little improvisation on their latest
recording. "It always took a marginal place in our music," he says. "We
always preferred to express our sound in a structured form rather than
playing 'solos.' However, for Elec3Cities, each of us often
improvised and recorded them as audio tracks for the others to listen to
and spark different possible solutions for a theme or a sound as you
hear it."
Following
in the footsteps of such pioneering North European electronic jazz
artists as Nils Petter, Molvaer, Eivind Aarset, Jan Bang, Eric Honore,
Arve Henriksen and bands like Supersilient and Jaga Jazzst, Chat Noir
are poised to take their place on that new music scene with the release
of Elec3Cities, their most adventurous and potent project to date.
TRACKS
- Avant Buddha
- Chelsea High Line
- Ninth
- Pearls
- Radio Show
- Peaceful
- Our Hearts Have Been Bombed
- Aspekt
 |
| CLICK TO VIEW |
|
|
