Sam Prekop and John McEntire have labored in concord for near 30 years. Because the singer-guitarist and drummer in The Sea And Cake – alongside bassist Archer Prewitt – the pair have amassed a physique of labor that takes a great few hours to sift by on Spotify, although such is the breezy, easy nature of the fabric, you’d be laborious pushed to recollect which songs stand out. For followers, this familiarity has lengthy been a part of the Chicago band’s attraction: throughout 11 albums since their debut in 1994, The Sea And Cake’s innocuous post-rock – at occasions jazzy, typically overtly pop, all the time elegantly turned out – has been a dependable, comforting presence; a steady reminder that irrespective of how horrible issues are on the earth, Sam Prekop will nonetheless be singing his inscrutable poetry in hushed tones over lushly organized grooves, every new instalment of stylish fusion barely completely different to the final.
Hear intently and so they’re a dynamic proposition – parts of modular synthesis and percussive percolations populate 2011’s The Moonlight Butterfly and 2012’s Runner – but like several high quality act, their particular person skills are in service to the good thing about the group, and The Sea And Cake’s enduring geniality can typically seem to have turned these elite musicians into journeymen. With Sons Of, Prekop and McEntire’s first joint collaboration, we get to listen to what occurs once they’re free of the band format, when standard buildings now not apply, and these inherently reserved creatures are let free within the wild. As an train in stay, largely improvised electronics, these 4 lengthy items deliver out the perfect within the pair, showcasing their skill to waft whereas harnessing their explicit strengths.
By selection, McEntire has spent his total profession as an engineer, mixer and producer working throughout the framework of different bands’ schedules – he just lately labored on Ryley Walker’s Course In Fable – and because the driving pressure behind Tortoise, his abilities as post-rock’s rhythm king shine solely sporadically nowadays. Their final album, The Catastrophist, got here out in 2016, and even inside that group of free-jazz maestros every member has a job to play, naturally curbing their alternatives for self-expression.
Prekop’s musical evolution is extra revealing, as a result of sooner or later between his 2005 solo set Who’s Your New Professor and 2010’s Previous Punchcard he obtained the bug for modular synthesis and determined to shift his focus from shimmering indie to vocal-less analogue electronics, its patterns and irregularities interesting to his inventive sensibility (he’s additionally a photographer and painter). For a quiet and considerate man, the daring instrumental works on his two current albums, The Republic (2015) and Comma (2020), maybe permit him to say extra about himself, as he makes an attempt to provide form and that means to the summary sounds he’s producing in his house studio in Pilsen, Chicago.
Sons Of – named by McEntire after the Scott Walker music and that includes McEntire’s cats, Jackie and Lamar, on the duvet – leads on from a few Prekop’s post-Comma excursions, “Spelling” and “Saturday Saturday”, two 20-minute items of pastoral circuit-bending for the Longform Editions imprint. But it’s McEntire who propels these new tracks together with succulent kicks and crisp snares, the hi-hats dissolving into hiss as “A Ghost Of Midday” breaks down halfway in, and the pulses shifting to a four-four climax throughout “Crossing At The Shallow”. For a challenge that started off just a few years in the past as an occasional stay improvisation – the pair sat on stage going through one another, hunched over their gear, no mounted concept of the place they’re headed – it’s change into a tantalising exploration of modern-day kosmische. Seemingly liberated by know-how, these two fifty-something blokes conjure the form of utopian panoplies dreamt up by Harald Grosskopf and Neu! on the 24-minute “A Yellow Gown”, a swirling, burbling journey that additionally nods to current experiments by Roman Flügel and Peder Mannerfelt.
That monitor relies on a stay recording from a present in Chicago on the finish of final 12 months, whereas “A Ghost Of Midday” stems from an earlier efficiency in Düsseldorf. Each had been then buffed up by Prekop and McEntire of their respective studios – McEntire now lives in Portland, Oregon – after which despatched between one another till completed. What’s most stunning about Sons Of is how snug the pair are with this extra psychedelic route – main you to surprise why they’ve by no means performed this type of factor earlier than. The closing “Ascending By Night time” is a strong piece of smouldering techno, bathed in gauzy synths. If that is what the post-rock afterparty feels like, rely us in.
