drazek fuscaldo featuring hamid drake, tatsu aoki, thymme jones & joshua abrams: june 22

"Like last year's brilliant Wings Dipped in Fire (FTR 398CS, 2023), this new album was recorded by Taylor Hales at Chicago's Electrical Audio. But this time, the duo (once known at Mako Sica) is joined not just by keyboard/trumpet master Thymme Jones, but also percussionist Hamid Drake, bassist Tatsu Aoki (on shamisen) and bassist Joshua Abrams. A total post-form all-star line-up, with more combined chops than a breakfast table crammed with lumberjacks. The mood on june 22 is weird and simmering. Blasts of heat alternate with spaced-out jam abstractions with Brent Fuscaldo's vocals and Przemyslaw Krys Drazek's guitar and trumpet dodging in and out of available crevices. As with all of this combo's recent music, exactly what genre they occupy is not easy to say. This is something they share with this generation of Chicago improvisers, who often seem to begin in jazz, but evolve into something much more intangible, mysterious and beautiful. Just as Abrams' Natural Information Society is making sounds requiring multi-hyphonic descriptives, so Drazek Fuscaldo have dissolved categorical confines, although their journey to this point began in a rock (or post-rock) formulation. By now the music contains multitudes -- jazz, folk, world music, avant-garde experimentalism and beyond. It defies being called anything other than MUSIC. Great music. And to quote the Captain once again, 'If you got ears, you gotta listen.' Don't know what else to say, except june 22 is a killer." --Byron Coley, 2023