Whether you’re in the market for sphincter-clenchingly outré free jazz (presumably) named after an iconic Little Caesers menu item, or for more pastoral fare abstracting folk traditions, September 21 is your lucky day — that’s when Astral Spirits’ newest batch of free jazz and experimental confections is droppin’.
The batch, which is the label’s 18th, will include releases by Brandon Seabrook Trio, East of the Valley Blues, Brandon Lopez, and Crazy Bread.
Here’s the rundown:
- Crazy Bread is the duo of Hausu Mountain’s Max Allison and noted Chicagoan and Switchfoot fan Ryley Walker. Their album, Vocoder Divorce, consists of live-recorded improvisations for guitar and tape deck.
- The Brandon Seabrook Trio’s Convulsionaries sees guitarist Brandon Seabrook joined by upright bassist Henry Fraser and cellist Daniel Levin on a set of Seabrook compositions that merge improv with complex composition. Convulsionaries will be released in a limited run of 150 cassettes and 200 CDs.
- East of the Valley Blues’ Ressemblera is the fourth album of guitar-based improvisation by brothers Kevin and Patrick Cahill, which follows up last year’s Fayet.
- Bassist Brandon Lopez’s new album, the last in the batch, is titled Quoniam Facta Sum Vilis, which translates to the very metal “for I have become vile in the eyes of the lord,” and it is composed as the inverse of the musical logic of Bach’s cello suites—an exercise in rendering “something florid and beautiful from the violent and erratic and [denying] the supremacy of the wrote in favor of the intuitive.”
Exciting, no? Yes. For the next three weeks, be sure to keep your eyeballs glued to Astral Spirits Bandcamp page, and in the mean time, dig in to some enticing live vids from Seabrook and East of the Valley Blues to help yet your mind feelin’ free.