Three-Layer Cake is a creation of radically experimental musical minds Brandon Seabrook (guitar, banjo, tapes), Mike Pride (percussion, glockenspiel, bells, organ) and Mike Watt (bass). Seabrook and Pride have delved headlong into many forms of edgy music, but both are also trained jazz musicians. They join forces with the underground rock bass veteran Watt, whose long resumes stretches from The Minutemen and fIREHOSE to Porno for Pyros and Iggy Pop.
Watt’s non-jazz underground rock pedigree is strong enough to make Seabrook and Pride to come largely over to his side, and the two completely forget they came out of a jazz conservatory or once backed Anthony Braxton, fully indulging their punk side without forsaking any of their untethered inclinations.
As Three-Layer Cake, Seabrook, Pride and Watt made Stove Top during the height of lockdown, recording each of their parts from studios in their respective homes in California (Watt), upstate New York (Pride) and Brooklyn (Seabrook). That presented an extra challenge, especially since this is group improvised music. But being who they are, Seabrook, Pride and Watt only saw an opportunity to unlock further potential and took full advantage of the down time to create outlier music that finds little parallel to anything else.
“Beatified, Bedraggled and Bombed” aggressively defies categorization. Pride and Watt do put together a groove for a spell, but Seabrook’s gonzo banjo and violin samples makes everything touch-and-go, especially when Pride and Watt go off the beat. The groove on “Big Burner” however, proves more resilient and Seabrook’s rhythm guitar flirts with normality at least until he playing microtones.
“A Durable Quest” isn’t raucous but it is foreboding, and Watt’s bass figure gives the song a definable shape that Pride enhances (with brushes and marimba) and Seabrook contorts, wringing out alien — even some softly ambient — tonalities. Watt’s bass steps out and roams during “Shepherds” but stays connected to his partners making spectral noises with glockenspiel (Pride) and tapes (Seabrook).
Watt’s metal fuzz bass on “Tiller” is quite a contrast to the banjo, marimba and Farfisa-style organ swirling about; Frank Zappa probably would have loved this. Seabrook continues the reveling in contradictions, punctuating his jittery lines with rich chords on “Primary Fuel” as the Watt/Pride groove machine powers on.
Never being in the same place at the same time, Brandon Seabrook, Mike Pride, Mike Watt were somehow able to mold strongly peculiar music that fits together to form a weirdly cohesive whole. Three-Layer Cake’s Stove Top is set to impact on May 14, 2021 from Rare Noise Records.
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