the thing: boot!

After more than 600 concerts around the globe, five studio albums, and a variety of live releases over the years, the Scandinavian garage, free-jazz trio, The Thing -- Mats Gustafsson (saxophones), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass), and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) -- are excited to present their sixth studio album, Boot!. As the first album on their new label, The Thing Records (in association with Austrian Trost Records), and first studio album following their collaborative release with Neneh Cherry, 2012's The Cherry Thing, Boot! is The Thing's most hard-hitting, open, and epic release to date. Recorded over three intense days, Boot! breathes life and energy, capturing the deep riffs and distorted activities of the electric bass, the attack of the snare drum, the depth of the bass sax and epic lines of the tenor sax. It marks an important development in the trio's endless search of musical poetic meltdowns with its definite rock sound and open playing. Throughout, they transform their roots, combining their own free jazz and punk aesthetics with elements of Ethiopian music, soul, funk, and noise, and re-work album-oriented material by jazz icons, John Coltrane and Duke Ellington. With dedicated fans in the rock, noise, and jazz communities, Boot! takes The Thing's music to new, uncompromising levels and continues to solidify The Thing's special and important position in the contemporary independent music world.