♫♪  Nick Millevoi and Ed Ricart Quartet - “Linive”

It’s fairly understandable that the twain of noise rock and free jazz would find a way to meet, even if the spiritual/secular axes might be strange cohabitants — concern with cathartic pure sound and voluminous protest, coupled with allover rhythm, present a shared freedom-from, even if the freedom-for is less easily defined. Philly guitarist Nick Millevoi (Many Arms) and Ohio guitarist/bassist Ed Ricart (Matta Gawa, Hyrokkin) have their ears tuned to a variety of heavy forms, though their separate output differs heavily, with Ricart’s following a more outwardly spiritual path. Haitian Railroad is their first collaboration on wax, due out in July as a split release (LP/CS) between Gaffer and New Atlantis, and finds them joined by the metallic, paint-peeling saxophone playing of Travis Laplante (Little Women) and the acrobatic chug of drummer Ches Smith.

“Linive” marries knotty progressive tendencies and improvised clatter in a pretty remarkable way, Ricart’s frenetic fuzz a wild foil for Millevoi’s studied flintiness. It would be fair to say that they feed one another to the point that each musician enters an area they might skirt independently; the partnering of Ricart and Smith is also grounds for a powerful, controlled abandon within the rhythm section. Laplante emerges with a throaty wail at the halfway point, curiously opening up the ensemble to spare, incisive, and resonant exploration, at which point Smith takes the reins unaccompanied before the ensemble returns for a monolithic charge of seething sound. If “Linive” is any indication, the Millevoi-Ricart Quartet is about to drop a wonderfully unhinged stew of avant-garde jazz rock on an unsuspecting public.

• Nick Millevoi: http://nickmillevoi.blogspot.com
• Ed Ricart: http://www.myspace.com/edwardricart

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

Most Read



Etc.