June 22 (Feeding Tube)
Drazek Fuscaldo
Released November 17, 2023
Pitchfork 30 Best Jazz and Experimental Albums of 2023
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lZ_gsLQbl4N-_qsJEcxweOjVwrY3HC_HI
Spotify:
About:
Like last year’s brilliant Wings Dipped in Fire (FTRCS398) this new album was recorded by Taylor Hales at Chicago’s Electrical Audio. But this time, the duo (once known at Mako Sica) is joined not just by keyboard/trumpet master Thymme Jones, but also percussionist Hamid Drake, bassist Tatsu
Aoki (on shamisen) and bassist Joshua Abrams. A total post-form all-star line-up, with more combined chops than a breakfast table crammed with lumberjacks.
The mood on june 22 is weird and simmering. Blasts of heat alternate with spaced-out jam abstractions with Brent Fuscaldo’s vocals and Przemyslaw Krys Drazek’s guitar and trumpet dodging in and out of available crevices. As with all of this combo’s recent music, exactly what genre they occupy is not easy to say. This is something they share with this generation of Chicago improvisers, who often seem to begin in jazz, but evolve into something much more intangible, mysterious and beautiful.
Just as Abrams’ Natural Information Society is making sounds requiring multi-hyphonic descriptives, so Drazek Fuscaldo have dissolved categorical confines, although their journey to this point began in a rock (or post-rock) formulation. By now the music contains multitudes — jazz, folk, world music, avant garde experimentalism and beyond. It defies being called anything other than MUSIC. Great music.
And to quote the Captain once again, “If you got ears, you gotta listen.”
Don’t know what else to say, except june 22 is a killer.
Byron Coley
Track Listing:
1. Weaving Tongues 20:44
2. The Coyote Messenger 06:52
3. Blossoming 14:01
Personnel:
Przemysław Drążek: electric guitar, horns, percussion
Brent Fuscaldo: voice, lyrics, classical guitar, harmonica, percussion
Hamid Drake: drum set, percussion
Tatsu Aoki: shamisen, upright bass
Thymme Jones: piano, drum set, trumpet, walkie talkie, percussion, melodica
Joshua Abrams: upright bass
Recorded and Mixed at Electrical Audio, by Tylor Hales
Intro to “Weaving Tongues” recorded at Promusica by Ken Christianson
Mastered by Matthew Barnhart
Review:
Trumpeter/guitarist Przemyslaw Krys Drazek and vocalist Brent Fuscaldo have been working in the Chicago avant-garde scene for well over a decade, both as Mako Sica and now as Drazek Fuscaldo. This set for Astral Spirits brings out Tatsu Aoki’s shamisen and Joshua Abrams’ hypnotic double bass and taps into the history of Chicago’s psychedelic past: You can hear this as an early incantatory Thrill Jockey record or a more spiritual-jazz outgrowth of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The music trickles out of the speakers but finds many grooves, electric and acoustic, elemental and ethereal.
Jeremy D. Larson (Pitchfork)
