Forebrace

FOREBRACE is a new quartet led by Alex Ward and featuring Roberto Sassi (Vole, Cardosanto, Snorkel), Santiago Horro (Nøught, Luke Barlow Band), and Jem Doulton (Dead Days Beyond Help, Mr. Ron Jetson). Their debut album "Bad Folds" was recorded over the course of two intense days in the studio, prior to which the four had never played together as a unit. The material generated during these sessions (including not only several free improvisations, but also a number of performances based on compositional ideas made up by Alex on the spot) was then structured into a complex and absorbing whole in which paranoiac funk, disturbing atmospherics and full-throttle ensemble interplay co-exist side by side. While some immediate reference points for Forebrace's music might be the raging electric violence of Last Exit, the dense contrapuntal babble of Ornette Coleman's Prime Time ensembles, or even the pummelling immersiveness of Swans, "Bad Folds" also ventures into more abstract and unclassifiable realms drawing on the extended sonic vocabularies of all four musicians, and in particular Sassi and Horro's astute and disorientating deployment of a wide range of electronic treatments. (Ward also at points employs a defiantly crude form of electric tonal modification, by feeding his clarinet through a small amplifier pushed to the point of unhealthily overdriven feedback.) The strength of understanding and rapport between the band members can be seen to have its roots in their involvements and prior collaborations in both the London improvised music and avant-rock scenes (including Ward and Doulton's ongoing 7-year partnership as the duo Dead Days Beyond Help); and in Forebrace they draw from both worlds to create a distinctly new ensemble identity. "Bad Folds" is out now on Copepod Records.

Chris Pitsiokos

Chris Pitsiokos is a New York-born, Berlin-based world-renowned saxophonist, improviser, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. He has performed extensively in North and South America, Europe and Japan. Chris has been praised by Rolling Stone for his “startlingly original vision” and “astonishingly fleet sax work.” Downbeat has identified his band CP Unit as “A persuasive combination of harmolodic jazz and contemporary noise rock.” As a soloist he has developed a unique voice on the alto saxophone: his expansion of the instrument’s vocabulary has served to multiply its emotive and formal possibilities. He has performed at dozens of major festivals across the globe, including (but not limited to) Wels Unlimited Festival in Austria, Sapporo International Arts Festival in Japan, Moers Festival in Germany, Tempo Reale Festival in Italy, Rewire Festival in the Netherlands, Jazz Jantar Festival in Poland and Festival de Jazz Lima in Peru. In New York he has presented his work at Roulette Intermedium, ISSUE Project Room, and during a residency at John Zorn’s club the Stone. Lately, he has developed interactive electro-acoustic systems for saxophone and computer. He also composes music for film. His list of collaborators represents a who’s who of the luminaries in 20th and 21st century improvised music, experimental music and jazz: he has worked with Jaimie Branch, Luke Stewart, Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey, Lea Bertucci, Weasel Walter, Otomo Yoshihide, Nate Wooley, Axel Dörner, Julien Desprez, Sachiko M, Mazen Kerbaj and Paul Lytton to name a small few.

www.chrispitsiokos.com