The New York experimental duo White Out has announced its first new album since 2011, Accidental Sky, a collaboration with Nels Cline, who before finding a life as Wilco’s head guitarist and occasional Mark Kozelek punching bag was an underground/improv/experimental scene regular. The two-piece has played with Cline before, but this is the first time they commit their encounter on record. Slightly putting aside their skronkier impulses for the summit with the Los Angeles axeman, White Out and Cline explore electric textures across the album’s seven tracks, coming up with something closer to a plugged-up take on electroacustic composition than free-jazz or pigfucking-grade shredding.
White Out, formed by Tom Surgal and Lin Culbertson in the mid 90s, is no stranger to high-profile collaborators. The group has previously recorded with Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke, No-Neck Blues Band’s David Nuss, William Winant, C. Spencer Yeh, and Mike Watt, among several others. A decade and a half and six albums into their career, White Out are the owners of a distinguished body of work, which has consistently broken the boundaries of noise-rock and free-improv, unjustly flying under the radar for too long.
Accidental Sky is out October 16 via Northern Spy.
Meanwhile, Surgal started a Kickstarter campaign to fund a documentary called Fire Music: A history of the free jazz revolution, which is executive produced by Nels Cline and Thurston Moore. Find details on the campaign here.
• White Out: http://whiteoutinc.com
• Norther Spy Records: http://northernspyrecords.com
More about: Nels Cline, White Out
