Joshua Abrams - Magnetoception 2xLP / 2xCD
Out Nov 20th on 2xLP and 2xCD.
A new edition of Joshua Abrams’ 2015 2xLP magnum opus Magnetoception is at last here. Out-of-print on vinyl for a decade+, Magnetoception is the 3rd album, & 1st double album, in the saga of Natural Information Society. In a Berwyn, Illinois attic, February 2013, Abrams, guitarists Emmett Kelly & Jeff Parker, & grand master drummer Hamid Drake gathered around vintage Neumanns & a woodstove to record the nucleus of Magnetoception live to 2-track. Beamed-in over the next year at Abrams' Chicago home studio were Lisa Alvarado’s harmonium, Ben Boye’s electric autoharp, Drake’s conga drum, & solo pieces by Abrams for harp & clarinet. Thanks to Marc Masters championing the album for Pitchfork’s bygone column The Out Door & its appearance in The Wire magazine’s 2015 Rewind, Magnetoception moved the project from the recesses of the underground into realms of greater visibility. From the 2015 Eremite press release:
The artist's first large scale work on vinyl, Magnetoception began as a commission by Eremite for Abrams to make a double LP based in extended performances by an ensemble of Abrams, guitarists Emmett Kelly & Jeff Parker, & drummer Hamid Drake. Abrams's compositions are a fascinating nexus of ideas from non-western traditional musics, minimalism & jazz designed to catalyze his musicians toward a single group-mind organism of sound. On his 2012 album Represencing Abrams presented his music in capsule-length pieces realized by duo & trio groupings drawn from a pool of a dozen musicians. Magnetoception presents one ensemble methodically unfolding his compositions over longer durations. The performances intricately layer rhythm, melody & drone into sonic textiles of extraordinary expressive breadth, by turns dense or spacious, repetitive or indeterminate, clattering or placid.
The members of Natural Information Society craft Abrams’ songs likepainters composing a landscape, or bricklayers constructing a building, with patience and devotion that values long goals over immediate gratification. Inside these calm journeys lie new sonic revelations, which might not have come in shorter durations.—Marc Masters, Pitchfork
Patient, layered music that’s always heading somewhere, sometimes spareand sometimes complex and shimmering.—Ben Ratliff, New York Times
Not just a great set of grooves, but an antidote to the splintered attention of 21st century living.—Bill Meyer, Dusted
A fever dream of new American music with an international & historicallywayward umbilical to non-western idioms & 20th century minimalism. —David Keenan, The Wire
EU edition on Aguirre, US edition on Eremite.
