Description

It’s a study in elegance, spatial inquiry, and textural restraint. The longer these band members play together, the closer to the bone Vandermark’s writing gets for them, and the more they open the music from the inside out. The Color of Memory is the finest and most adventurous set yet from one of the finest bands to emerge from North America in the last 20 years.

“Ken Vandermark’s compositions here reflect two distinct areas of his headspace– four of them lean hard on wild improvisation, abrasive texture, and intensity, and the other four offer a more lyrical, traditional perspective on the group’s interplay. Personally, I’m fonder of the latter, and the difference is pronounced enough that separating the two camps on the two discs might actually have made sense. With upright bass, drums, two saxes/clarinets, and trombone, the band has a unique texture, and the harmonic structure of the songs is sometimes very ambiguous.” -Joe Tangari, Pitchfork

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