| Product Summary | | Label: DOMINO/ADA | | UPC: 00801390021220 | | Release Date: 11/18/2008 | | Buy.com Sku: 209752146 | | Item#: M4G4GW | | Buy.com Sales Rank: 25050 | Format:  CD |
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| Song Listing |  |
Disc 1
| | Song Title | Sample | | 1. Lyman Place ~ Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid |  | | 2. 1st & 1st ~ Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid | | | 3. 25th Street ~ Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid | | | 4. Arrival ~ Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid | | | 5. Between B & C ~ Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid | | | 6. Departure ~ Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid | |
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| | Album Notes and Credits |
Notes & Personnel Info |  | Personnel: Kieran Hebden (electronics); Steve Reid (drums). | | Recording information: AVATAR Studio, NY (02/05/2008/02/06/2008). | | Photographer: Koushik Ghosh. | | On 2008's NYC, their fourth full-length outing together, U.K. electronica artist Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) and veteran jazz drummer Steve Reid offer up another hypnotic set based on samples and percussion. Drawing inspiration from Reid's former hometown, the duo evokes both the energy and the beauty of New York City with tracks ranging from the funky, fast-paced "1st and 1st" to the chiming "Arrival." While the material on NYC can be challenging to those unaccustomed to free-jazz-influenced music, the record is easily Hebden & Reid's most focused and melodic album, and stands as a notable work in the catalogues of both performers. | | Sometimes it all comes down to sprawl; at others, it all comes down to the ordered chaos of crowded spaces. New York City has made a human and technological science of both: the seemingly endless numbers and diversity of its people operating in very defined, contained spaces. The fourth collaboration between vanguard jazz ber drummer Steve Reid and Four Tet mastermind Kieran Hebden is entitled NYC for a reason. Over six tracks -- all named for geographical locations within the city -- and 42 minutes, this pair manages their most ambitious, rhythmically and texturally dense offering yet which maneuvers through a think, layered sonic soup that makes sense, even as it aurally reveals the poetry in motion of colors, dynamics, and how a lack of space can be expanded upon to reach into the world itself. | | Previous offerings by the duo tried to reflect the nature of improvisation and the stretched dynamics of texture, but that is not the case here -- intentionally at least. Reid, a New York native who lives in Europe, has always been a proponent of circular rhythm. In his manner of drumming, no matter how expansive the harmonic palette, or how free the improvisation, the listener can always find her way back inside. This is underscored on NYC. Beginning with "Lyman Place," Reid's drums find a forceful, seemingly monotonous beat that's heavy on low tuned tom- toms and ride cymbal. There are other elements as well, but they're added for polyrhythmic structure. Hebden adorns the drums with all manner of feedback, blips, beeps, squeals, and ambiences to open up and extend the reach of the drums. The sharp yet funky electric guitar riff whose sample provides its own rhythmic pulse on "1st & 1st" is equal parts J.B.'s and Malian groove-think Lobi Traor?. It offers a window for Reid to allow the circular rhythms to wind themselves out. It's all call-and-response with sound (oscillators, analog synths, industrial sounds) coming in from all directions and kicking the dimension of the tune -- especially with some fine single-beat muted chord drone in the form of another guitar sample as a steadfast handle to glue it together. "25th Street" begins with a keyboard vamp, made up of a single chord for Reid to hang his drums on. It places the listener dead center of a seismic rhythmic orgy where hand drums get layered against the kit, and shimmering sonics hang on the fringes. This is dance music for the nuclear age, rooted in the primitive yet projecting into the sprawling unknown future. The final track begins with a sampled kora pulse. Its tones become overtones before Reid even enters and he dances all around them with a series of complex runs on his kit before opening up his attack from the inside and coming at the string sounds from underneath. His rolls become the assault, but they are transformed into a fingerpopping backdrop in this hymn of ambience. Sampled, repetitive clocks ticking in metronymic extremis add tension and sustenance. Keyboards slowly wind around the rhythmic instruments creating a new beat conscious breath of their own. | | NYC is all rhythm. It makes a solid, inarguable case that rhythm is harmony, melody, dynamic, texture, and tension, all rolled into one inseparable being. NYC is a perfect sound mirror of the city itself. It's a beautifully architected series of tone poems that soothes and provokes both thought and physical movement after the initial shock wears off. ~ Thom Jurek |
Producer: Kieran Hebden; Kieran Hebden |
Engineer: Roy Hendrickson |
| | Compilation Appearances |
| | Technical Info | | Release Date : 11/18/2008 | | Original Release Date : 2008 | | Catalog ID : 212 | | Label : Domino Recording Company USA (USA) | | Number of Discs : 1 | | Studio/Live : Studio | | Mono/Stereo : Stereo | | SPAR Code : n/a | | UPC : 00801390021220 |
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| | Professional Reviews | | Spin (p.88)
- 4 stars out of 5 -- "Harnessing acid-rock bass, analog squiggles, and what sounds like a drum showroom's worth of percussion, these New York odes jump from ON THE CORNER funk to the cosmic maelstrom of the Boredoms."The Wire (p.60)
- "Hebden lays down a sampled riff, Reid hacks out an undeviating 4/4 rhythmic path and Hebden embellishes with further electrickery." JazzTimes (p.74)
- "[T]hey create grooves almost out of nothing. One chord and a driving beat is all they need, and they're off." Record Collector (magazine)
(p.94)
- 4 stars out of 5 -- "Hebden's soundscapes over six suites frame Reid's great drumming and percussion work to create an album that's resonant with life and cultural influence." Signal To Noise (magazine)
(p.59)
- "NYC is an excellent introduction to the unfashionably joyous avant-funk these musical bedfellows create with great consistency." |
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