Chicago-based bassist Joshua Abrams is a card-carrying member of that city's avant-garde jazz scene, having recorded with the likes of AACM members Nicole Mitchell, Matana Roberts and Fred Anderson. Active as both a sideman and a bandleader, Magnetoception is the third record on which he is accompanied by a variable group of like-minded players, and also the tertiary collection of material to be centred on Abrams' guimbri, a North African bass lute.
The Eremite label specifically commissioned Abrams to release a double album — there is over seventy minutes' worth of music here — as a way to better capture the extended recording sessions in which he was involved with guitarists Emmett Kelly and Jeff Parker and drummer Hamid Drake. It's easy to get lost in this music; the endless repetitive rhythms slowly burn their way through one's consciousness, binding with the listener at a deep level of existence. Melodies and drones dance and play alongside Drake's rooted and complex rhythmic patterns.
This music is spiritual, a set of vibrations meant to interlock with humanity's electrical thought impulses, designed to guide listeners to other worlds. Mission accomplished.
(Eremite)The Eremite label specifically commissioned Abrams to release a double album — there is over seventy minutes' worth of music here — as a way to better capture the extended recording sessions in which he was involved with guitarists Emmett Kelly and Jeff Parker and drummer Hamid Drake. It's easy to get lost in this music; the endless repetitive rhythms slowly burn their way through one's consciousness, binding with the listener at a deep level of existence. Melodies and drones dance and play alongside Drake's rooted and complex rhythmic patterns.
This music is spiritual, a set of vibrations meant to interlock with humanity's electrical thought impulses, designed to guide listeners to other worlds. Mission accomplished.