Joshua Abrams & Natural Information
Society
Simultonality
Release date: April 14thth, 2017
GBCD/LP 048 EAN: 4030433604823 & 4030433604816
“Abrams makes music that falls between genres. There are hints of jazz, rock, raga,
and many cultural musics, but it all feels singular."
-- Pitchfork
We are very proud that Simultonailty will be released in Europe on Glitterbeat’s new
label imprint: tak:til
The follow-up to Joshua Abrams's critically acclaimed 2015 album
Magnetoception is here. Simultonality, credited to Joshua Abrams & Natural
Information Society (NIS), is the first recording in the project’s nine year, four
album history made by a regularly gigging manifestation rather than a special
assembly of friends. Recorded in 2014 & 2015 in single takes by the full
ensemble during & after tours of the U.S. & Canada, Simultonality sets out new
pathways for Abrams & the NIS to reach the next summit, & once more
affirms the project's unique approach to joining traditional musics, American
minimalism & jazz with the Gnawa ceremonial instrument the guimbri.
Stasis, continuity & repetition, central qualities of Abrams language, defined
Magnetoception, a double album of beautifully spacious & unhurried music that
rated high on both The Wire & Pitchfork’s lists of the best records of 2015.
These same qualities form the heart of Abrams music on Simultonality. But
where Abrams once said Magnetoception is about “winter & death,”
Simultonality —in Abrams words— is an album of “pure motion.” Without
sounding frenetic it is the most explosive NIS music on record, & without
sounding over-determined it is Abrams's most structured & thru-composed music
yet. Much of it is also fast (“the last record was slow”), a mass of densely
patterned elements swiftly orbiting constantly reconfiguring centers that are
variously harmonic & rhythmic, clearly stated or implied. While so teeming &
tightly packed as to sometimes seem impossible to parse, the music is at no
time any more disorderly than a colony of bees pollinating a vast garden. Its
many moving parts function in mutualistic relationship toward fulfilling Abrams's
long stated intention for the project: to help listener’s achieve a meditative
center & to consciously use music as a gateway to living. Abrams credits the
great bassist & composer William Parker as an inspiration for this intention.
The musicians on Simultonality date back to the nascency of NIS. Along with
Hamid Drake, Mikel Avery & Frank Rosaly are Abrams first-call drummers for
the project. Abrams prefers two or more drummers in NIS whenever possible.
On Simultonality, Avery is in the left channel, Rosaly the right. The metallic
shaker sound sometimes heard in the center of the stereo image is the rattle
attached to Abrams’s guimbri. Astute heads may recognize the rhythm in
“Sideways Fall” as Jaki Leibezeit's drum break in Can’s “Vitamin C.” For
“Sideways Fall”, the two drummers divided the beat into separate parts at
Abrams behest. According to Hamid Drake the rhythm was popularized, if not
originated, by John “Jabo” Starks & Clyde Stubblefield of the J.B.’s. Nearly
ten years into its existence, Abrams & the NIS wear their influences with
creativity & ease.
Long standing NIS members Ben Boye & Emmett Kelly were previously together
with Abrams, or not, in Bonnie Prince Billy’s band, & Abrams & Boye have at
different times played in Kelly's band The Cairo Gang (Boye & Kelly are
presently in Ty Segall’s Freedom Band). Harmonium player Lisa Alvarado also
contributes the large format pattern paintings used by NIS at concerts & for
its album covers.
A note on Simultonalty’s closer, "2128½ South Indiana". Abrams is back on
bass, as he was in the 1990s when serving as house bassist for the weekly
session at Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge (address 2128½ South Indiana Ave.,
Chicago). At the end of the night Anderson often played Alice Coltrane’s
Journey In Satchidananda as he re-stocked the bar & the musicians packed up
their instruments. The open-form group improv that starts the piece makes
explicit Abrams & NIS's roots in free music culture, until the journey to the
spirit of Fred Anderson & back to the glory of The Velvet Lounge begins. Guest
artist Ari Brown’s gently wheeling, prayerful solo comes from way deep inside
Chicago’s heavyweight tenor saxophone history.
Along with the usual hooey about talent & vision, perseverance & sacrifice, great
music just involves time. eremite released earlier recordings by this manifestation
of NIS as bonus tracks —recorded 2012 & 2013 respectively— on our 2014 CD
reissues of Natural Information & Represencing. With the release of
Simultonality we now finally & definitively show the project’s direction of the
last five years (& as anyone who heard Abrams’s November 2016 residency at
Chicago’s Hideout Inn knows, he is already moving on).
To grow the project into a second decade by reaching a wider audience, eremite
is partnered with Glitterbeat Records (Germany) to release Simultonality on LP
& CD in the European market on Glitterbeat’s new imprint tak:til.
Michael Ehlers / eremite records