Joshua Abrams

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams has released eight albums, collaborated on over a hundred recordings, and composed soundtracks for Steve James’ Life Itself, the Emmy award winning The Interrupters, and Bill Siegel’s The Trials of Muhammad Ali. The New York Times describes his 2012 record, Represencing (Eremite) as "music that hints at the ceremonial without losing its modern bearings" and The Wire named his record Natural Information (Eremite) one of the top 50 recordings of 2010. The Village Voice picked his record Unknown Known as “one of the top 10 jazz albums of 2013”. He was a founding member of the “back porch minimalism” collective Town and Country and with Matana Roberts and Chad Taylor, the trio Sticks and Stones. Primarily known as a bassist, Joshua’s performances and recordings include work with Fred Anderson, Roscoe Mitchell, Hamid Drake, Peter Brotzmann, Bill Dixon, John Tchicai, Toumani Diabate, Joe McPhee, The Roots, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, Mike Reed, Rob Mazurek, Gerald Cleaver, Henry Grimes, Bobby Broom, Dana Hall, Axel Dorner, Neil Michael Hagerty and the Howling Hex, Prefuse 73, Savath and Savalis, Sam Prekop, Jandek, Rhys Chatham, Damo Suzuki, Theaster Gates, Craig Taborn and Earle Brown. His latest record “Magnetoception” is due out in the fall of 2014 on Eremite records.

Natural Information Society is the name of Abrams’ group that formed in the wake of his records for Eremite. Live the music center around the sound of the guimbri (a Gnawan lute), integrating composition and improvisation to create hypnotic, highly rhythmic, psychedelic environments with an orientation towards uplift. This incarnation of Natural Information Society will also feature Lisa Alvarado on harmonium and Frank Rosaly on drums.

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With the release of Natural Information in 2010, Joshua Abrams entered into a new phase of his creative life, making music with a deep involving groove that communicates the pulsating energies of the human body and the incessant kaleidoscopic interplay of sensory perceptions.  Represencing, recorded in Chicago in the summer of 2011 and originally released the following year by Eremite, was the next stride along this exhilarating path.Once again Abrams gives a key role to the guimbri, a North African bass lute, which he had started to play during the late 90s following a trip to Morocco. Its sound when plucked is percussive, emphatic from moment to moment, yet also bouncy and rhythmically propulsive, as if naturally springing forward. A time-honoured instrument, used traditionally in healing ceremonies, the guimbri in Abrams’ hands offers an invitation to the trance, an expanded present where time intersects with timelessness.  As the title Represencing suggests, this is uplifting music with a serious mission - to express that ongoing present and to give voice to our presence, here and now, within time’s continuous flow. Once again, a fine selection of sympathetic friends help Abrams to craft this antidote to the current century’s compulsion to accelerate and its ever-diminishing attention span. They include saxophonist David Boykin, drummer Chad Taylor and guitarists Jeff Parker and Emmett Kelly. Lisa Alvarado plays harmonium on two tracks. She also provides a painting for the cover art which matches the music beautifully, vivid and vibrant, its interlocking geometry binding fragmentary perceptions into a coherent pattern, self-sufficient yet also clearly part of a far larger picture. By 2012 this fascinating music was taking on a group identity, performed by Abrams with the Natural Information Society. That development  was subsequently consolidated with the recording of Magnetoception, released in 2015. Represencing, however, conveys the excited air of an adventure unfolding. Reminiscent in passing of a variety of other musics - of tightly poised jazz, motoric rock and minimalism plus echoes from other cultural traditions - it remains nonetheless a singular statement by an artist rapidly finding his own distinctive voice. The music offered by Represencing is intricate yet direct, hypnotically repetitive yet constantly changing, built to last yet intimately present. 

Joshua Abrams – Represencing

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