About
From the idiosyncratic musical mind of guitarist/composer Brandon Seabrook comes his latest album
Convulsionaries (Astral Spirits). In his close to two decades in NYC, Seabrook has garnered international acclaim for his sui generis approach to the electric guitar, one which astounds with tremolo pyrotechnics and an entropic, miasmic sensibility. While those elements are in full effect on
Convulsionaries, they’re met with a mature and thorough sense of dynamics, pace, groove, and feeling. Joining Seabrook on this release are the young upright bassist Henry Fraser (Anthony Coleman, The Full Salon) and Daniel Levin (Tony Malaby, Mat Maneri), two revolutionary string players who have been working in various creative ensembles in Brooklyn for years. Together, the string trio tackles Seabrook’s thorny compositions, which perpetually surprise and unseat the listener throughout the album’s proceedings. The trio’s frightening rhythmic precision oscillates between ominous repeating ostinatos; angular, and intricate counterpoint, and a massive dynamic range which can change in a nanosecond. Seabrook’s imaginative compositions are a study turning a sense of impending doom into cathartic releases, allowing equal space for improvisation and rigid execution of the complex scores.
