Reviews:
(Dead Angel) It's fitting that the first track by this quartet -- Dan Blackberg on trombone, Evan Lipson on bass, Katt Hernanden on violin, and Michael Evans on drums -- should be called "Entropy is Information," because their sound is very much the musical equivalent of entropy in action. Like a musical pictograph of the art of entropy, the musicians break forth with enigmatic snippets of sound that rarely come together, but instead weave around each other. It's not as chaotic as you might expect, but certainly a far cry from traditional music, and punctuated with subdued passages that border on total silence. The chaos arrives in earnest on "We are all 11 or 26 Dimensions," as mighty bleating from the trombone announces an orgy of dissonance and furiously pinwheeling sound of a highly improvisational nature. The three remaining tracks -- "Seething Form of Potential," "Quantum Entanglement," and "Particle Zoo" -- play out in similar fashion, with each member's instrument taking the lead on each new track before culminating in an orgy of whacked-out sounds in the final track. Like most releases on the label, you'll either find it fascinating for the sounds and tones and textures or you'll find it utterly unlistenable; either way, there's plenty of interesting stuff going on here, assuming you have the background (or the will) to decipher it. - RKF
(Killed In Cars) My favorite of this batch of Eh? releases, Psychotic Quartet is a Philly-based group that brings together a number of really exciting musicians from one of my favorite music scenes in a free improvisation context. Trombonist Dan Blacksberg also plays in Archer Spade with guitarist Nick Milleovi (whose own recent contribution to an Eh? release will be covered soon), bassist Evan Lipson plays in one of my favorite bands, Normal Love (and was probably the only person who could successfully follow Jesse Krakow in Dynamite Club), and violinist Kat Hernandez (who recently relocated to Sweden) specializes in microtonal and alternate tuning systems, a recent obsession of mine. They’re joined by NYC drummer Michael Evans for five rounds of complex improvisation referencing a wide range of musical traditions. Microtonal doesn’t necessarily equate with “out of tune,” of course. While it can mean touching quarter tones or making waves of weird noise, it also points to playing music that can be even more “in tune” than is possible within equal temperament. I was excited to note that all three melodic instruments working on this album have the potential to play outside of the constraints of ET with little effort, and I found myself re-listening to this album many times with my attention directed at subtle adjustments in pitch happening organically as a simple side effect of listening carefully to one another. And the group keeps things interesting with moments of duo and trio playing, too. The music breathes with the kind of control many groups can only get through composition, but this is what you can achieve when you put four virtuosos who all have their own compositional chops together: cooperation truly equals instant composition. This is much more note-oriented than the other two releases covered here, which more closely follows my own musical obsessions. Though it is a very “free” affair, there are allusions to various musical genres, especially jazz and even bits of swing violin, that can give listeners moments of stylistic context which slide around in interesting ways that frequently reminded me of very early Anthony Braxton ensemble playing. And that’s a high compliment—parts of this sound like a kind of extension of Braxton’s BYG Actual 6 album from ‘69, one of my favorite records, and that’s a style that just didn’t get enough love for my ears. While sections of this music can be very “serious,” there is also a great sense of humor, humility, and fun running throughout the record. You can tell the musicians are having a great time playing together, and they’ve been kind enough to invite us to listen in. I’m looking forward to the next invitation. - Scott Scholz
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