Elliott Schwartz & Big Blood
- Ant Farm
Released by Feeding Tube Records
or
LP Edition of 300. Numbered.
by Byron Coley
An incredible album of music, conjoining two different sonic aspects
of Maine’s Strangeness. Big Blood are well known to fanciers of
contemporary sub-underground sounds. The duo of Colleen Kinsella and
Caleb Mulkerin have been conjuring up rural-experimental ghosts for over
a decade. Feeding Tube has previously released their double LP set,
Radio Valkyrie (FTR 103) to rapturous acclaim. Their music embodies the mysteries of the deep woods better than any othe artist we can name.
Elliott Schwartz, meanwhile, has been composing and playing brilliant
(often keyboard based) music for decades. His 1973 duo album with
saxophonist Marion Brown (released by Bowdoin College, where he has been
based for many years), is often cited as one of the primest examples of
a free jazz/avant classical hybrid. And all of his records are quite
killer.
This LP came together as the soundtrack for an exhibit called
Ant Farm,
organized to showcase the work of Maine-based art quartet, The Ant
Girls. This visual arts group included Ms. Kinsella and the late Dorothy
“Deedee” Schwartz in its ranks, so it’s perhaps is this collab less
surprising than it might initially appear.
But surprising or not, the work is an incredible syncretic fusion.
Although there are certain instrumental parts we might ascribe to one
artist or the other, as the music unwinds these divisions melt and
become all-but-imaginary. The blend of Big Blood’s psych-tinged
free-folk improvisations and Schwartz’s aleatory work on keys and
percussion is a ver righteous blast.
300 numbered copies exist on our planet. Don’t delay.
