The Rempis Percussion Quartet - Rip Tear Crunch (2006)

"The name of Dave Rempis's latest group is fair warning: never before has the local saxophonist led a band that hit this hard. Bassist Anton Hatwich provides a stable fulcrum with his thrumming, insistent vamps, around which drummers Frank Rosaly and Tim Daisy, both on trap sets, play a dynamic array of swinging beats, interlocking Latin motifs, martial cadences, and nuanced, meterless textures. Even at full throttle the two drummers mesh precisely, despite their divergent styles: Rosaly's is fluid and sinuous, busy with double- kick flutters, while Daisy's is more spiky and agitated. Rempis sketches keening alto and tenor lines across the surface, taking a more overtly melodic tack than he does in Triage or his free-improv quartet with Jim Baker. At other times he switches to baritone and plunges down into the ensemble's dense and surging rhythms, using his horn like yet another percussion instrument--and it's then I start thinking this might be the best new jazz band in town. The set I caught a couple weeks ago at Hotti Biscotti created an unstoppable momentum with its seamless transitions, opening with a polyrhythmic whirlwind worthy of late - 60s Pharoah Sanders and building from there." - Bill Meyer, Chicago Reader