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LP
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FTR 513LP
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"A glorious re-match for Chicago's superb free-rock trio, Mako Sica, and the jazz world's percussionist of choice, Hamid Drake. Their last collaboration, Ronda (FTR 409LP, 2018) was a glorious, open-ended studio conversation spread across two LPs. Balancing Tear is a mix of studio and live recordings, awash with calmly oceanic passages, interspersed with compressed and feverish form-blurts. As with Ronda, the heft of the material is dynamically advanced. The album begins with passages worthy of Morricone's western soundtracks, but the action mutates with rapid surety. There's a track that will make you think of a micro-dosed Vic Damone singing balled for the Sephardic Justice Society with chunky, obtuse piano accompaniment recalling the work of Chris Abrahams (Necks). There are stretches of proggy soundtrack-y expansion with muted trumpet and deep bass roiling that make me think of Mark Cunningham's superb electro-jazz combo, Blood Quartet. There are even shadows of tango that emerge in places like sharks' fins breaching. Having played together as much as they have over the intervening years, Hamid's presence inside the overall gestalt of the sound is a natural fit. Mako Sica's sound expands without making it seem like there's a new element grafted to it. It's just bigger and better. As all freedom should be." --Byron Coley, 2020
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2LP
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FTR 409LP
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"Brilliant, inspired and somewhat surprising collaboration between Chicago's premier free-rock trio and the truly legendary percussionist, Hamid Drake, who has played with everyone from Don Cherry to Peter Brötzmann to Lee Perry. This collusion was precipitated by Matt Jackowiak, a mutual friend, who thought a merging of their sounds might make for an ecstatic explosion. This feeling became mutual after they played a show together at Constellation. The set mixes Mako Sica tunes with improvisations that took everyone to places they hadn't expected, and the trip was deemed an utter success. Ronda was done at two sessions, scheduled around Hamid's insanely busy work schedule. The first was at Jamdek with Douglas Malone at the board, the second was at Electrical Audio with Taylor Hales. The Electrical session allowed the players access to a host of additional instruments, so the sonic palette on 'Dance With Waves' and 'Emanation' is wider and somehow more cosmic than usual. But the whole album has an extraordinary depth and width of sound. Even the great songs Mako Sica has had in its set for a while like 'The Old Book,' gain whole new levels of otherness here, and the material based in quartet improvisations, like 'The Wu Wei,' explores wild new territory for the band. Ronda (named after a town in southern Spain with a famous 18th Century bridge crossing a deep gorge) is the first span connecting the disparate musical worlds of Mako Sica and Hamid Drake. Let us hope it is but the first of many." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 500.
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