Brandon Seabrook - In the Swarm (2022) [Hi-Res]

Few bands in improvised music seem to generate more palpable sonic friction than Brandon Seabrook’s trio with Cooper-Moore and Gerald Cleaver. The group produces a seriously tactile, almost psychedelic sound: the gut-punch of drums, the rumbling twang of diddley-bow, and the slashing, brittle crunch of electric guitar. On Exulations, the trio’s 2020 debut album on Astral Spirits, these sounds coalesced into gritty, propulsive improvisations possessed of an almost three-dimensional physicality. Those rhythmic and melodic fragments came together with puzzle-piece logic, like an aural Rubik’s cube, but one that never stopped moving. On the trio’s hotly anticipated follow-up In the Swarm, the group has broadened its timbre with Seabrook’s banjo and Cleaver’s electronics, and they’ve upped the ante with some thrilling post-production maneuvers that either further expand the sonic palette or turn the modus operandi upside down.

Brandon Seabrook - Guitar and Banjo
Gerald Cleaver - Drums and Electronics
Cooper-Moore - Diddley-Bow