The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis return, for their second collaboration. While their first record dealt in deep grooves and comfortably familiar rhythms, Deface the Currency aims for something noisier, angrier and more invigorating. The guitar takes command, with Anthony Pirog unleashing boiling leads and laying down thickets of distorted drones, while the rhythm section barrels away behind him. Lewis holds his own, sometimes playing fierce counterpoint to Pirog, sometimes bolstering the guitar’s attack, and often making his own searing, soaring declarations.
Category: James Brandon Lewis
James Brandon Lewis :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis joins us to discuss his riveting new album Apple Cores: “I just operate within my natural being…I’m the person who, the things that people have told me were wrong about my playing, I leaned into harder.”
James Brandon Lewis :: Apple Cores
On his second album for Anti, tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis has a new trio of old hands and a fresh outlook. Celebrating the giants of free jazz via dubby grooves, sticky funk and monstrous hip-hop beats, Apple Cores is a vibrant celebration of tradition dressed as an urgent manifesto of the new. With a keen intellect and an emotional acuity, Lewis imagines a boisterous multiplicity of sounds, eras and even cities that all happen to coexist in the same place, right here, right now.