Colin Stetson will be performing tracks from his dazzling new album at the Stone and the New Museum this month
Thursday, February 3, the Stone, Ave. C at Second St., 8:00
Thursday, February 17, the New Museum, 235 Bowery, $12, 7:00
www.myspace.com/colinstetsonmusic
www.thestonenyc.com
www.newmuseum.org
Stellar sax sideman Colin Stetson has played with Arcade Fire, the Sway Machinery, Laurie Anderson, the Belle Orchestre, Tom Waits, Antibalas, TV on the Radio, and others, but for his second solo album and tour, he’s front and center, highlighting songs from his dazzling new album, NEW HISTORY WARFARE VOL. 2: JUDGES (Constellation, February 22, 2011). The Montreal-based musician brought his alto, tenor, and bass saxophones to Hotel2Tango in his hometown, where producer Shahzad Ismaily and engineer Efrim Menuck set up twenty-four microphones throughout the studio, each one capturing different elements of Stetson’s unique abilities. The recordings were then sent to Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, where master mixer Ben Frost transformed them into fourteen soundscapes that boggle the mind. Although it often feels like Stetson is playing with a full band, it’s just him and his saxes, with the only overdubs French horn on one song and Anderson and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden contributing vocals to several tracks. The songs range from the spacey “Awake on Foreign Shores” and “The Stars in His Head (Dark Lights Remix)” to the beautifully cacophonous “From No Part of Me Could I Summon a Voice,” “Clothed in the Skin of the Dead,” and “The Righteous Wrath of an Honourable Man” to the mysterious finale, “In Love and in Justice.” Worden adds whispery vocals to Blind Willie Johnson’s “Lord I Just Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes,” while Anderson does her trademark talk-singing on “All the Colors Bleached to White (ILAIJ II)” and “Judges,” with both women featured on “Fear of the Unknown and the Blazing Sun.” On “A Dream of Water,” Anderson intones, “There were those who knew the rules.” On NEW HISTORY WARFARE VOL. 2: JUDGES, the rules are thrown out, resulting in a hypnotic suite of electrifying songs that incorporate avant-jazz, classical, minimalism, folk, blues, and more into a whole new sonic experience. Stetson will be performing solo February 3 at the Stone, followed by drummer Ryan Sawyer and bassist Ismaily, and February 17 at the New Museum as part of the Get Weird series, with percussionist Jon Mueller.