CD released: Feb 02, 2018
Brooklyn ensemble Sunwatchers return with the incendiary follow up to their 2016 eponymous debut, the appropriately titled "II". The quartet continues to defy adequate description, incorporating elements of free jazz, psychedelia, punk, Ethiopian and Thai music and funk into a dizzy, invigorating sound. "II" kicks off with the click of sticks and launches into "Nosebeers", a righteous burner that writhes and squawks with heady desert vibes and white hot saxophone, soundingnot unlike something akin to Group Doueh jamming with John Zorn. "The Hot Eye" is next, and the band doesn't let up revving up an anxious marching beat into a raging squall that ebbs & flows with tidal waves of horn and guitar. The band has more in store for listeners, easing into the third track "There Are Weapons You Can Bring To School". With it's contemplative tone, the song sets a mood for the album, righteous, socially conscious messaging, no more evident than the message embroidered onto the tape stry that graces the front cover artwork: "SUNWATCHERS STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE DISPOSSESSED, IMPOVERISHED AND EMBATTLED PEOPLE OF THE WORLD". The band considers it both a mission statement & a battle cry: "We are musicians, and we will leave political specifics to those more qualified than we are. All the time and energy and passion we can muster we dedicate to writing, performing, recording and releasing music instrumental music, released from the tyranny of semantics into the freedom and hopefulness of universality-of-connection. We thusly realize the need to become overt about our own intentions and our own mores; without the ease and accessibility of direct language, the onus is on us to express our principles in other ways."* The album's second side opens with the barn-burning "Silent Boogie" with saxophonist Jeff Tobias tapping into the elemental fires of free-jazzskronk while the rhythm section hammers away like the Asheton brothers on a speed trip. "The Works" & "Flo wers Of The Water (For Lou)" close out the album, simmering the boil, and firing the listener off into Interstellar Space. |
