Chora / Quivers
(Ultramarine - UM0061) split LP $25.00
Chora on this recording is joined by Ben Nash and Karl Brummer who only enhance Rob Lye’s and Ben Morris’s already gorgeous mix of psychedelic free-form improvisation and ecstatic free jazz, with hypnotic percussion, cymbals, bowed instruments, eerie reeds, and an overall ritualistic, shamanic vibe. Guitarist Ninni Morgia and upright bassist Jordon Schranz have drummer extraordinaire and Milford Graves student Mike Pride on board for the Quivers improvisations; get ready for amazing timbral research and creative interplay, sometimes reminding of great historical groups like AMM, Musica Elettronica Viva and Smegma. Artwork by Pascal Nichols (Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides). Edition of 300.
Ruined Parabola
(Chironex) LP $20.00
A huge seventeen-minute blast kicks off side one with Gamelan-inspired percussion and metallic drones. The rich and expansive sound feels like the scouts of a storm have amassed with invisible bodies among the bones of a weathered shipyard. Warm tones ebb in cycles, while the percussion thins and a strangled horn blasts a Fire-styled cry. Vocals holler at a ghostly distance. Chimes and cymbals are met with thudding, hard wooden knocks. The end draws near with elongated guitar tones that add a sense of arid landscape to what originally feels like a nautical storm. Violent, caustic, organic noise and improvised calamity. Instruments twist and arch in suffocating formations.
Slates
(Sergent Massacre - SM03) LP $14.00
First vinyl outing for Peckham-based trio — Ben Morris, Rob Lye and Chris Boyd — who use a revolving approach to composing, improvising and recording, with sounds moving between shingled, skeletal percussion and kitchen-sink Gamelan to electronic attack and ecstatic vocalization.