The latest installment of Chicago's Boxhead Ensemble reveals a further evolution in its lineup. Michael Krassner and Fred Lonberg-Holm are still constants, but add to this mix Jessica Billey (Smog), Michael Colligan (Pillow), Ryan Hembrey (Edith Frost, ex-Pinetop Seven), Glenn Kotche (Wilco, Jim O'Rourke, Loose Fur), and Scott Tuma (Souled American), and the lineup dictates musically the manner in which the recording proceeds. Quartets is easily the quietest, most "narrative" statement on tape from the collective. Full of ...
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The latest installment of Chicago's Boxhead Ensemble reveals a further evolution in its lineup. Michael Krassner and Fred Lonberg-Holm are still constants, but add to this mix Jessica Billey (Smog), Michael Colligan (Pillow), Ryan Hembrey (Edith Frost, ex-Pinetop Seven), Glenn Kotche (Wilco, Jim O'Rourke, Loose Fur), and Scott Tuma (Souled American), and the lineup dictates musically the manner in which the recording proceeds. Quartets is easily the quietest, most "narrative" statement on tape from the collective. Full of lilting strings, restrained tensions, and gradually developing dynamics, each of the seven selections, simply numbered instead of titled, offers a different shade of the graceful, slowly unfolding stringscapes where melodies enter via a side door and angular harmonics are smoothed out over intervals as gradually constructed as they are dissipated. This is poetic music -- soft, seemingly meandering, but nonetheless almost effortlessly revealing the deep emotional realities it invokes. But then, that isn't quite fair: the amount of discipline and control it takes to play music this restrained, music that allows its beauty to come out of a whispered articulation of phraseology and nuance, is far from effortless, and, if one would consult the late composer Morton Feldman, almost Herculean in intention and effort. Complete with two soundtrack sketches, Quartets is the finest, most focused, and elegantly realized Boxhead album yet. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi
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