Half Notes: Random Touch – Tributary (2011)

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Random Touch, perfectly named, is an accidental neo-prog music collective. Even better, they’ve issued a double album called Tributary, a 23-track, two-hour project, that — again, perfectly named — couldn’t be further from the mainstream. Comprised of found sounds and improvisational asides on whatever instrument is at hand, Random Touch has constructed something that recalls, at times, space music, and at other times something like free jazz — and, at still other times, something like a slow-moving interlude in a psychedelic rock song. There’s an otherworldly, blissful, altogether intoxicating nature to the album, even if it doesn’t always make sense at first blush. That’s part of the journey.

Tributary is the 15th release from Random Touch, which includes Christopher Brown, James Day and Scott Hamill. The album is available through the band’s Web site randomtouch.com and also at CDBaby.

Nick DeRiso