The second album from guitarist Brandon Seabrook's Trio with Gerald Cleaver on drums & pulsating & punctuating electronics, Cooper-Moore providing massive and unconvential bass sounds on his Diddley Bow, and Seabrook himself playing banjo in inexplicably rapid and staccato runs or electric guitar with eccentric effects; rip-roaring, sometimes surreal, absolutely superb!
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Brandon Seabrook-guitar, banjo
Gerald Cleaver-drums, electronics
Cooper-Moore-Diddley Bow
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Label: Astral Spirits
Catalog ID: AS193LP
Squidco Product Code: 32355
Format: LP
Condition: New
Released: 2022
Country: USA
Packaging: LP
Recorded at Menegroth, in Queens, New York, in July, August and Septe,ber, 2021, by Colin Marston.
"Few bands in improvised music seem to generate more palpable sonic friction than Brandon Seabrook's trio with Cooper-Moore and Gerald Cleaver. The group produces a seriously tactile, almost psychedelic sound: the gut-punch of drums, the rumbling twang of diddley-bow, and the slashing, brittle crunch of electric guitar. On Exulations, the trio's 2020 debut album on Astral Spirits, these sounds coalesced into gritty, propulsive improvisations possessed of an almost three-dimensional physicality.
Those rhythmic and melodic fragments came together with puzzle-piece logic, like an aural Rubik's cube, but one that never stopped moving. On the trio's hotly anticipated follow-up In the Swarm, the group has broadened its timbre with Seabrook's banjo and Cleaver's electronics, and they've upped the ante with some thrilling post-production maneuvers that either further expand the sonic palette or turn the modus operandi upside down."-Astral Spirits
"With electictic instrumentation including a banjo and a diddley-bow (the primitive one-string contraption that sat at the heart of early blues), you might expect this session to be some kind of front-porch country-folk jam. YouÕd be wrong Ð unless the locale in question was famous for its backwoods psychedelics lab and experimental FM radio station. The opening title track announces the trioÕs wayward intentions with Seabrook coaxing crystalline tones from the banjo with a bow before hunkering into crabbed, brittle fretwork full of crazed detail, while Cooper-Moore (usually known, of course, as a pianist) supplies a wonky, lumbering diddley-bow bass line and Cleaver rides an insistent rim-shot rhythm. Add clouds of rumbling electronics and weÕre a long way from Kansas, Toto.
On ÔVibrancy Yourself,Õ Seabrook switches to electric guitar Ð treated with a weirdly muffled modulation Ð chopping out jagged gashes that lead the Ôbow and drums into a discordant, Beefheartian clatter. ÔCrepuscule of CleaverÕ digs even deeper, hocking up a sickly yellow puddle of robot vomit while the rhythm section flails in jerky, stop-start abandon. Proof, if any were needed, that all three musicians are among the most daring and versatile currently operating in creative music."-Daniel Spicer, JazzWise
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Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Brandon Seabrook "Described by Spin Magazine as "An apocalyptic, supersonic general of the banjo..." Brandon Seabrook has made a name for himself in the New York avant-garde music scene as an explosive guitar and banjo performer, relentlessly committed to immediacy and precision. Seabrook honed his terror-inducing riffage skills at the New England Conservatory in Boston. He has since performed extensively in North and South America, Mexico and Europe, as a solo artist, bandleader and collaborator. He has been summoned by the likes of Anthony Braxton, Elliot Sharp and Joey Arias for his unpredictably spiked approach to improvisation and impeccable caterwauling. He has been profiled in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Magnet Magazine, Fretboard Journal, NPR and The Wire. Seabrook Power Plant, the nuclear trio donned "a manic clusterfuck of merciless banjo torture" by the Village Voice, is Brandon's brainchild, blending the brutal energy of punk-rock with the intricate execution of through-composed avant jazz. The band has released two albums to much critical acclaim. Time Out New York praised the band's eponymous debut as "not only one of the most baffling experimental releases of the year... also one of the best." Brandon is an accomplished solo artist, named Best Guitarist in New York City by the Village Voice 2012. In 2014, New Atlantis Records released his first solo album titled Sylphid Vitalizers. Noisey called the album a "dissonant guitar army...(with) mind-blowing prog-rock complexities - all at mind-numbing breakneck speed." Brandon is currently working on two new albums with his noise-prog trio, Needle Driver and a new sextet featuring immoral, percussive compositions under the name Die Trommel Fatale. This recent work is a poly-rhythmic exploration of the dark side of the drum, layering cello, bass, electronics, voice and guitar against dichotomous drummers." ^ Hide Bio for Brandon Seabrook • Show Bio for Gerald Cleaver "Gerald Cleaver (born May 4, 1963) is an African-American jazz drummer from Detroit, Michigan. Cleaver's father is drummer John Cleaver Jr., originally from Springfield, Ohio, and his mother was from Greenwood, Mississippi. Gerald had six older siblings. Cleaver joined the jazz faculty at the University of Michigan in 1995. He has performed or recorded with Joe Morris, Mat Maneri, Roscoe Mitchell, Miroslav Vitous, Michael Formanek, Tomasz Sta ko, Franck Amsallem and others. Under the name Veil of Names, Cleaver released an album called Adjust on the Fresh Sounds New Talent label in 2001. It featured Maneri, Ben Monder, Andrew Bishop, Craig Taborn and Reid Anderson and was a Best Debut Recording Nominee by the Jazz Journalists Association. Cleaver currently leads the groups Uncle June, Black Host, Violet Hour and NiMbNl as well as working as a sideman with many different artists." ^ Hide Bio for Gerald Cleaver • Show Bio for Cooper-Moore "As a composer, performer, instrument builder/designer, storyteller, teacher, mentor, and organizer, Cooper-Moore [b. August 31, 1946] has been a major, if somewhat behind-the-scenes, catalyst in the world of creative music for over 40 years. As a child prodigy Cooper-Moore played piano in churches near his birthplace in the Piedmont region of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. His performance roots in the realm of avant jazz music date to the NYC Loft Jazz era in the early/mid-70s. His first fully committed jazz group was formed in 1970 - the collective trio Apogee with David S. Ware and drummer Marc Edwards. Sonny Rollins asked them to open for him at the Village Vanguard in 1973, and they did so with aplomb. A studio recording of this group was made in 1977, and issued as Birth of a Being on hatHut under Ware's name in 1979 (re-mixed and re-issued in expanded form on AUM Fidelity in 2015!). Following an evidently rather trying European tour with Ware, Beaver Harris, and Brian Smith in 1981, Cooper-Moore returned home and completely destroyed his piano, with sledgehammer and fire, in his backyard. He didn't play piano again until some years after, instead focusing his energies from 1981-1985 on developing and implementing curriculum to teach children through music via the Head Start program. Returning to New York in 1985, he spent a great part of his creative time working and performing with theatre and dance productions, largely utilizing his hand-crafted instruments. It was not until the early 90s, when William Parker asked him to join his group In Order To Survive, that Cooper-Moore's pianistic gifts were again regularly featured in the jazz context. In the early 'aughts the group Triptych Myth was his own first regular working jazz group in decades and together they blazed some trails and released two albums: one rich formative, and one exquisite. A destined creative re-union with David S. Ware in the Planetary Unknown quartet, the Digital Primitives trio with Assif Tsahar & Chad Taylor, and continued work with William Parker followed. Cooper-Moore's creative life continues well-strong and unabated into the present day. He will be/was the Lifetime Achievement Honoree at the 22nd iteration of Vision Festval, NYC on May 29, 2017." ^ Hide Bio for Cooper-Moore
4/17/2024
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4/17/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
4/17/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
Track Listing:
SIDE A
1. In The Swarm 5:25
2. Subliminal Gaucheries 5:10
3. Vibrancy Yourself 5:11
4. Crepuscule Of Cleaver 5:16
SIDE B
1. Adrenaline Charters 6:03
2. Seething Excitations 5:29
3. Aghastitude 10:08
4. Of The Swarm 1:09
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