The next time a haughty mustached gentleman kicks off a conversation with you and a semicircle of buds in which an attempt is made to tease out a distinction between noise music and free-jazz — “Well, you see…” *pensive chin touch* “It’s simply a matter of instrumentation!” *additional gesticulations* — I give you permission to respond with some drastic pure vigilante shit. Suggestions: Consider getting in his face like “COME AGAIN PLZ ? ༼ ಠ益ಠ ༽” after every sentence. If the offender is rocking formal wear, try tugging on his tie for a minute. Or maybe get the whole semicircle’s attention and solemnly begin a counter-monologue of truth: “Regarding these musics established on the principles of chaos, primal improvisation, and structural uncertainty, the distinction between ‘noise’ and ‘free-jazz’ necessitates messy considerations of historical/musicological context, artist intent, and… yeah, probably instrumentation. But I ask you: the feelings of excitement, disgust, wonder, and awe that reach you in moments of solitary listening — do these benefit from any of yer labels, man? Let it all go and just feel it.” Then just sit back and wait for the slow clap.
[Editor’s note: *slow clap*].
After nine tape releases since 2009 and that one-sided LP on Pizza Night, Tiger Hatchery prepare to release their first proper full-length, Sun Worship. The free-music trio, featuring Mike Forbes on sax, Andrew Scott Young on bass, and Ben Billington (a.k.a. Quicksails) on drums, honed their chops on tours through the experimental/noise DIY circuit and local gigs in the Chicago underground. It’s no small victory for true heads and truthseekers everywhere then that the band’s debut LP arrives on November 19 via the legendary ESP-Disk’ (!!!), almost 50 years after the label’s inception. Yeah: Sun Worship shares catalog space with the likes of Spiritual Unity, Town Hall 1962, the discography of The Godz, The Heliocentric Worlds of of Sun Ra Volumes 1 & 2, infinite etc.
“Chieftain,” premiering below, starts off Sun Worship with a threefold symbiosis of shred. Billington’s drums careen between spastic tom rolls and cymbal abuse. Forbes’ sax guns through upper-register squalls. Young’s bass emerges as a central voice in the chaos, cutting through the mix in a caustic chug that blossoms into a full-on solo near the two-minute mark. The second half of “Chieftain” showcases the trio’s versatility as improvisers, pitting two of three instruments against each other in intensifying interlude passages, dipping into silence, and bashing through a cataclysm of a coda savage enough to drown out any conversation about genre or historical musicological context. “COME AGAIN PLZ?”
• Tiger Hatchery: http://www.tigerhatchery.com
• ESP-Disk’: http://espdisk.com
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