Bassist Nick Dunston caused a stir in 2019 with his debut album Atlantic Extraction, an album where Dunston is leading a quintet playing highly improvised music fronted by violin and flute. Three years later, Dunston goes even further out.
“Spider Season” is the name of Dunston’s new band. It is also the provocative new album and the advance single from the same album and like his first release, this music is coming to us from Out Of Your Head Records. The quintet is now a trio of completely different personnel save for Dunston himself, with Kalia Vandever on trombone and DoYeon Kim on gayageum (a sort of Korean zither). Some effects are sprinkled throughout, usually in the form of sound-expanding sampling and looping techniques.
Spider Season is a very dauntless endeavor. Collective improvisation is already a leap into the abyss, Dunston is doing this with an unfamiliar collection of instruments and no pulsekeeping. Throughout this album, Dunston, Vandever and Kim are often heard playing their instruments in ways that probably would have driven their old music teachers crazy but all the rules-breaking is what makes this such an attractively marked departure from what’s normal these days, even within progressive jazz circles.
The titular track will be publicly available on July 5, 2022 but we’ve posted a stream of it that’s premiering above. In a band lacking a percussionist, extra ingenuity is sometimes demanded and Dunston’s band is up to the task; this is actually one of the rare times on the album that there’s a set rhythm. After stretching exercises, a groove gets going in an ever-so-slight nod to convention in an album that thumbs its nose at it. Thanks to the seductively exotic combo of trombone, gayageum and arco bass, this song remains too remote from other music to make comparisons. But Dunston’s approach of starting with broad ideas and developing them creatively while playing them is ultimately why this works.
So, get a load of “Spider Season” now and brace yourself for the complete set of songs that follows. The more you open your mind, the more you will love it.
The full album Spider Season drops on July 15, 2022.
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- Michael Attias, “Avrils” from ‘Quartet Music Vol. II- Kardamon Fall’ (2024): Streaming premiere - October 11, 2024
- Bryn Roberts, “Aloft” from ‘Aloft’ (2024): Video Premiere - September 20, 2024
