Chés Simpson

From 2016 to 2018, I attempted to make my trio with Mat and Craig my “road” band, and somehow succeeded, for a spell. Bill Frisell came to hear us play in late 2018, and then wrote me, asking about the music. Craig, Mat and I have admired Bill since each of us began in this music, so I invited him to play a gig with us. Though it took more than a year to book the date, as we played the show, Bill felt like a natural part of the band.

Guitarist-composer David Torn, a longstanding ECM artist, has enjoyed a particularly fruitful 21st-century with the label, releasing two albums under his own name – the solo only sky and quartet disc prezens – in addition to producing records by Tim Berne and Michael Formanek. With Sun of Goldfinger, Torn returns in a trio alongside the alto saxophonist Berne and percussionist Ches Smith (a member of Berne’s Snakeoil band who made his ECM leader debut in 2016 with The Bell). The Torn/Berne/Smith trio, also dubbed Sun of Goldfinger, features alone on two of this album’s three intense tracks of 20-plus minutes; the vast sonic tapestries of “Eye Muddle” and “Soften the Blow” – each spontaneous group compositions – belie the fact that only a trio is weaving them, with live electronics by Torn and Smith expanding the aural envelope.

The highly-anticipated bluegrass project from Sturgill Simpson is officially here. Affectionately titled Cuttin’ Grass, the new album was recorded at The Butcher Shoppe in Nashville, with the help of his drummer Miles Miller, producer David Ferguson, Tim O’Brien, Stuart Duncan, bassist Mike Bub, and more.

A stunning pairing of Mozart’s glorious ‘Gran Partita’ Serenade with a work written specifically to be performed alongside it, Geysir by the exceptional clarinettist-composer, Mark Simpson. Mark Simpson’s simmering, volcanic Geysir was inspired by the rich opening chord of Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’, and by its bubbling clarinet writing, which develop into what Simpson describes as a “flurry of colour and harmonic shifts”.

Just a few weeks after the surprise release of the Cuttin' Grass (Vol. 1): Butcher Shoppe Sessions album which Uproxx called “the most sublime and delightful music he’s yet made on record” Sturgill Simpson returns with the next installment of his bluegrass series, Cuttin' Grass (Vol. 2): The Cowboy Arms Sessions. The genre-defying singer/songwriter reconvened an A-Team of acoustic players (now dubbed "The Hillbilly Avengers") for another round of reinterpretations of his catalogue, this time largely focusing on 2016's A Sailor's Guide to Earth, which won the Grammy for Country Album of the Year and was nominated for Album of the Year. This volume also includes "Jesus Boogie," originally performed by Simpson's first band, Sunday Valley, and two previously unreleased songs, "Tennessee" and "Hobo Cartoon," the latter of which was co-written with the incomparable Merle Haggard who once said that Simpson was "about the only thing I've heard that was worth listening to in a long time."

Inspired by such classic concept albums as Willie Nelson's Red-Headed Stranger, Sturgill Simpson's The Ballad of Dood & Juanita is the Grammy-winning singer/songwriter's third album in twelve months, and his most ambitious project to date. Written and recorded in less than a week, and featuring the same ace musicians who played on last year's Cuttin' Grass albums, the record tells a classic American story of a Civil War-era couple torn apart by violence and reunited by love—what Simpson calls "a simple tale of either redemption or revenge."