Keyboardist Thollem McDonas and Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich have resided only outside the margins of established music and both have had a long history of seeking out new collaborations with other musicians who share their thirst for experimentation in fresh new ways. Given that, it seems destined that the two would get together. Thollem’s Astral Traveling Sessions with John Dieterich marks the fourth time they’re getting together to make a record, the third as a duo.
Thollem-Dieterich is, plainly put, a weird juxtaposition of a dobro and a Waldorf Blofeld synthesizer. Acoustic and rustic clashing with modern electric. The success of these one-on-one improvisations hinges on the same thing, regardless of the instruments involved: the interaction between the participants. Thollem and Dieterich do not sit in their own corners to play their respective, dissimilar instruments; they work to find common ground in their melodic sound development as they revel in the wide disparity of tones.
Sometimes though, they even manage to harmonize together (the middle of Track 8 and the start of Track 9 are good examples of that). But in all cases, they do something that tingles your auditory senses because this is breaking new ground and they’re defining the whole dobro/synth genre as they go along. There might not be two musicians better equipped to be the first at doing that.
Thollem’s Astral Traveling Sessions with John Dieterich is part of an uber-ambitious album release project from Thollem: Thollem’s Astral Traveling Sessions. Over 2021, he will release a mind-blowing twenty-five albums of collaborations with seventy different musicians in all, all recorded while touring in 2019. That works out to a little over two releases a month and as of this writing, the Dieterich encounter and another one — with Peter Valsamis, Orlando Greenhill and Jae Kim – are already out. All 25 are to be released by Austin-based Astral Spirits Records.
Right now you can acquire Thollem’s Astral Traveling Sessions with John Dieterich from Bandcamp.
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