Big Label News: We’ll be releasing two more albums before the year’s out! Here’s everything you need to know!
Guitarist/composer Diego Caicedo will release Eidos Daimonium, a stunning fusion of extreme metal and avant-garde chamber music, November 7 on Burning Ambulance Music.
The album features an unorthodox string quartet with Francesc Llompart on violin, Leonor Falcón on viola, Clara Torner on cello and Alex Reviriego on bass, with Caicedo playing electric guitar and Carlos Jorge contributing vocals. The track “Parte III: Preludio y Fuga: Nismo Posiednji (1977)” is inspired by the work of painter Zoran Mušič (1909-2005).
Caicedo writes, “Eidos Daemonium is the continuation of Seis Amorfismos, my last work released by Burning Ambulance, but with a much more emphatic idea. This time, I felt an essential need to create a much heavier and denser work in terms of melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, lyrical, and orchestral information. Technically, in both composition, performance, and studio recording, I followed a similar approach to Seis Amorfismos. At the same time, I was looking for a sound more similar to a chamber orchestra with an unusual string quartet — violin, viola, cello, and double bass — and a sound closer to extreme metal in the guitars, as well as the vocals: louder, more aggressive, and experimental, with more direct lyrics but the same poetic orientation as before. The improvisations are also conducted by that fundamental need for dense and heavy intensity.
“The harmonic/melodic construction is based on three complex chords, each one constituted by seven voices and with a high density of dissonances, acting as ‘vertical characters,’ and their deployment in series/modes of notes and their respective contrapuntal variations, acting as ‘horizontal landscapes.’ The pieces are built on the different possibilities of interaction and exchange between the three chords and the fundamental characteristics within each of them. The rhythmic construction draws on the different expressions of extreme metal: dissonant death metal, technical death metal, and black metal, and in turn on the rhythmic development proposed by 20th/21st century composers and their different expressive disciplines.
“The structural/formal concept and the relationship between the pieces are based on a balance using a series of opposites: tension/relaxation, high/low, loud/soft, fast/slow, etc., with 60% traditional musical writing and 40% free improvisation and conduction signals.
“The lyrics are inspired by the social, political, economic, and ecological reality of this current dementia, polarization, destruction, dehumanization and genocidal behavior, filtered through more personal experiences, personal ideas and thoughts.”
Born in Colombia, Diego Caicedo has been based in Barcelona for over two decades. He is a vital part of the city’s free improv scene and works in a music school, teaching guitar and theory. He is as passionate about classical music and extreme metal as he is about jazz and free improv. His previous album, Seis Amorfismos, received rave reviews from The Wire (“an ambitious paradigm shift attempting to bridge seemingly disparate musical worlds”) and Avant Music News (“Caicedo’s writing and playing... bridge the gap between modern classical, metal, and free improv”).
The duo of tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman and trumpeter Nate Wooley will release Polarity 4, a pathbreaking document of their long-running musical partnership, November 7 on Burning Ambulance Music.
Each volume in the Polarity series has been different from the others, and different from anything else in Ivo Perelman’s vast discography. Polarity 4 is no exception, as its nine tracks include the first-ever example of overdubbing in his catalog; the opening “(one)” features two Perelmans and two Wooleys improvising over and around each other.
Ivo Perelman has released well over 125 albums on labels like Enja, Clean Feed, Leo, Homestead, Cadence, ESP-Disk’ and more. A tireless improviser constantly in search of new sonic vistas and new opportunities to play with others, he is also a visual artist and jewelry designer.
Nate Wooley is a trumpeter, composer and improviser dedicated to sonic exploration and experimental music. In addition to composing and performing, he edited the magazine Sound American for 30 issues over 10 years, and his writing has been published in The Nation, the New York Review of Books, and elsewhere.
Polarity was one of the first two releases on Burning Ambulance Music in 2021, and subsequent volumes arrived in 2023 and 2024. Each installment has received rave reviews from outlets like The Wire, DownBeat, and the Free Jazz Blog.
Polarity 4 and Eidos Daimonium will each be released digitally and as limited editions of 500 CDs in heavy-duty gatefold mini-LP sleeves printed on textured paper, with artwork by Burning Ambulance Music co-founder I.A. Freeman.
We’re offering specially priced bundle deals on both Diego Caicedo CDs, and all four Polarity discs, so head to Bandcamp now and get your orders in!
Before I go: My latest Ugly Beauty column for Stereogum published yesterday. In it, I discussed Joni Mitchell’s jazz-adjacent work with bassist Linda May Han Oh and singer-songwriter John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, and reviewed excellent new albums by Henry Threadgill, Mulatu Astatke, Nils Petter Molvaer, and others. Here’s the link.
Tuesday’s newsletter will be for paying subscribers only. It’s about Motörhead. See you then!
Motorhead plays rock & roll! 🤘😎🤘