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| Single Out Today – Guitarist/Banjoist Brandon Seabrook's 2nd Solo Album – Pyroclastic Records Object of Unknown Function, out October 18, 2024 via Pyroclastic Records, layers vintage banjos, electric and 12-string guitars and cassette recordings into an uncategorizable hybrid "Seabrook occupies sound worlds all his own. Is it jazz? Metal? Classical? Folk? Punk? It's all of the above—usually at the same time." – Brad Cohan, Bandcamp Daily There has always been a strong element of physicality to a Brandon Seabrook performance. To some degree that translates in his recorded output – the vigor with which he attacks his complex, aggressive, humor-laced compositions; the strain placed on guitars and banjos pushed to their extremes; the boundary-stretching leaps of his rapid-fire shredding and whiplash-inducing shifts between disparate pieces. On stage, there's even more to it than that. Audiences can see and feel Seabrook's strenuous movement, the gasps and grunts that accompany his most vehement playing, his full-body swaying and the thumps of flesh against wood and strings. On his second solo album, Object of Unknown Function, the adventurous guitarist, banjoist and composer sought to carry those elements into the recording. By attaching contact mics to his legs, throat and chest as well as to the bodies of his instruments, the album's already athletic music is subtly yet vividly infused with a tangible sense of flesh and blood. "The body / instrument relationship is vitally important to my music, " Seabrook says. "I don't just sit down and concentrate on executing these parts. A lot of my playing has to do with full engagement of the instrument body and my body. I wanted to try to put that into the recording." Available October 18, 2024 via Pyroclastic Records, Object of Unknown Function arrives ten years after Seabrook's last solo venture, the blistering Sylphid Vitalizers, which Noisey hailed as a "dissonant guitar army…(with) mind-blowing prog-rock complexities – all at mind-numbing breakneck speed." The new album encapsulates a decade of evolution, taking Seabrook's practice into diverse new directions. While it is undoubtedly a solo album, the pieces are hardly limited to a single player on a single instrument, at times layering a half-dozen or more banjos or guitars with ambient and percussion sounds from cassette tapes. Two recently acquired objects were key to developing the sonic environment of the album, their functions not entirely unknown but certainly stretched beyond the expected: a 1920 guitar banjo made by William O. Schmick, and a 1998 12-string electric guitar by the Nashville-based luthier Jerry Jones. These are supplemented by two of Seabrook's longtime axes, a 1925 Bacon & Day tenor banjo and a 1989 Fender Telecaster, and found sounds from a Tascam four-track cassette recorder. "Sometimes you get a new instrument and all these new ideas and new inspirations come from it, " Seabrook explains. "I've always been obsessed with 12-strings, and I finally found one that is just so beautiful and easy to play. Then this early 20th-century six-string banjo is also a beautiful instrument, but a little bit hard to play – which I liked. It pushes back." The guitar banjo was likely intended not as a melodic lead instrument but as a rhythmic accompaniment for Dixieland or early jazz ensembles. In Seabrook's hands both instrument and performer are shoved outside of their comfort zone, the friction providing another tactile sensation to the music. "I like that interplay with a past epoch, " he says. "I'm trying to do stuff on this instrument from another time period that it probably wasn't meant for at the time – bright tempos and figures, atonality and textures and repetitive riffs. The push and pull of that gave me so many ideas." The title track opens the album as an overture of sorts, presenting most of the elements that make up the sonic palette. It opens with an insistent, cyclical riff on the guitar banjo, alternating with ominous, explosive noise from the four-track. Gong-like percussion suggests a Gamelan influence, which enters into a violent call and response with a half-dozen bowed tenor banjos before the whole becomes subsumed by noise, cut off with near-apocalyptic suddenness. "Melodic Incidents for an Irrational World" borrows its title from an engraving by the 20th-century Mexican artist Leopoldo Méndez and masses four iterations of Seabrook's 12-string, seven bowed and two picked tenor banjos into a heady morass of sound. "Unbalanced Love Portfolio" is the first of several tracks to pare down to just Seabrook alone with one of his instruments, in this case and on "Phenomenal Doggerel" the Schmick guitar banjo. Both the warped groove of "Gawk Fodder" and the relentless "Some Recanted Evening" showcase the 12-string, while the barbed "Perverted by Perseverance" offsets Seabrook's Telecaster with tape recordings. "The Historical Importance of Eccentricity" takes a point with which Seabrook wholly agrees from The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, mutating guitars and banjos from an abstract bluegrass feel into off-kilter Rhys Chatham-style maximal-minimalism. Drawing inspiration from Seabrook's Italian heritage, "Gondola Freak" is derived from Neapolitan mandolin traditions. (Seabrook's family ties were at the forefront of his consciousness during the recording; Object of Unknown Function is dedicated to his father and uncle, both of whom passed away in the months surrounding the session. A horde of tenor banjos close the album with the atmospheric "The Snow Falling, Failing." In a way, Object of Unknown Function is Seabrook's own spin on creating a Frankenstein's monster, incongruously assembling a variety of incompatible pieces in ways for which they were never intended, then breathing his own form of life into the stitched-together whole. "Putting all these things together and creating these slabs of sound, " he muses. "This amalgam of stuff kind of becomes an object of unknown function for myself." Brandon Seabrook is a New York City-based guitarist and banjoist. His music fuses a wide range of practices and traditions: punk rock, jazz, pop, and metal. As a guitarist his work feeds off tactile sensations: rapid tremolo picking, contorted clusters, and extreme physicality. His ensemble music leans on a wide range of variance: jump cuts, chance, improvisation, humor, and tight segues. He has led a diverse range of groups including Seabrook Power Plant, Die Trommel Fatale, Epic Proportions, and the Brandon Seabrook Trio with Cooper-Moore and Gerald Cleaver. Pyroclastic Records Pianist-composer Kris Davis founded Pyroclastic Records in 2016. By supporting artists in the dissemination of their work, Pyroclastic empowers emerging and established artists to continue challenging conventional genre-labeling within their fields. Pyroclastic also seeks to galvanize and grow a creative community, providing opportunities, supporting diversity and expanding the audience for noncommercial art. Its albums often feature artwork by prominent visual artists—Ellsworth Kelly, Julian Charriére, Dike Blair, Raymond Pettibon and Gabriel de la Mora among recent examples. 2024 Pyroclastic projects include albums from Ches Smith, David Leon, Modney, Brandon Seabrook, Patricia Brennan and Kris Davis. Brandon Seabrook – Object of Unknown Function Pyroclastic Records – PR 37 – Recorded November 2023 Release date October 18, 2024 write your comments about the article :: © 2024 Jazz News :: home page |