Two creative minds who know and master their musical tools get together and produce some exceptional sounds that clearly trace a viable path into the future, today. Impressive-highly recommended. A welcome product from the pandemic.
From The Paris Review, an interview with Sorey:
NTERVIEWER
The last thing I wanted to ask you about is Paul Motian. I watched the Village Vanguard streamed concert you did with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano. And I thought, Oh my God, are they doing the Motian trio? He’s one of my favorite drummers and one of my favorite jazz composers. I’m wondering in what way he’s important to you, and what the plans are for that project.
SOREY
There will be a record coming next year. Paul Motian is another major force of influence for me, both as a composer and as a drummer. We talked earlier about space. Well, Paul Motian was kind of an expert at that—being able to leave a lot of space and allow things to happen. And when he allowed things to happen, it made him push the music even more in interesting directions. The other thing was his touch.
He’s pulling sound out of the instrument rather than playing at the drum set. He was pulling sound out of the drums by his touch, the attack, the dynamics. He’s a very dynamic drummer. That has inspired me since I began performing music with ensembles in the late nineties. From a compositional standpoint, too, he has a very oblique sense—and I don’t mean oblique in a negative way—of melody and harmony. A lot of notes that he would write melodically would end up in unexpected places. But they’d make sense, somehow. The musicians he had around him—like Joe and Bill, for example—could do so much with one very short, simple phrase that Paul Motian wrote. And he was my type of person. He was always very crass and had a very interesting sense of humor.
From Creative Independent, an interview with King Britt:
You’re a musician as well as a teacher. You’re also a mentor. As someone who spends a lot of time advocating for other people, how do you make sure you’re not sapped of energy by the time you get to your own projects?
It’s one of the first things I tell my students. When I first started getting into production, which is right after high school and going into college, I was making all these demos. I was working at Tower Records, and then also DJing. You’re 19 and you think you can do anything. You have all the energy in the world, so you just do it. You don’t even think about it.
In ‘94, my daughter was born. You have a kid, you have bills, so you have three, four irons in the fire and you’re just going for it. You’re really not thinking so much about time management until it overwhelms you. Then my label with Josh Wink, Ovum Recordigns, was through Sony from ‘99 to 2002. That was during the time when electronic music was exploding here, at Amp on MTV, all these shows. What we learned, me and Josh, is how to organize time. We had to think about things in a nine to five way. In the day, we would do more paperwork, faxes, all of this stuff in the day, the red tape. And at night, it’s all about the music.
But then in 2001, because I was married at the time, I also had my daughter, it was overwhelming. And so, I had to make a decision: Do I continue with the label and all of this touring, all of this? One thing has to go. When you get to that point in time in your career, you realize, I really need to get on a routine schedule, a daily routine or weekly routine, whatever it is, but you need a routine to get in a rhythm. You have to stay in rhythm. I left the label and just was 100% creative and less the business side of things.
Around Winter Music Conference 2002 maybe, 2003, I’m talking to Louie Vega. And I’m like, “Louie, dude, you have the family, you are pumping out remix after remix, you and Kenny, and also alone. How are you doing it?” We were just chilling poolside. I think it was Gilles Peterson or whatever spinning. I’m like, “Dude, how are you doing this? And he’s like, “I go to the studio from 11:00 AM to 8:00 at night and that’s it.” That’s his day as if he was going to work. He said the most important thing for him was having the studio out of the house. Going to another space. If you’re able to find a separate space that you can go to, and when you come home, home is home, it really is great—because the lines are too often blurred. As you know with Zoom, everyone working at home now, these lines are blurred. When he said that, it just clicked. So I got a separate space from where I was living. It changed the game. When I’m home, it’s strictly home and watching movies, whatever it is, other than music. I find that has been the best.
From The Buddy System (their label):
Upon first meeting one another, drummer / composer, Tyshawn Sorey and synthesist / producer, King Britt, had a mutual respect for one another's practice.
Growing up in Newark NJ, Tyshawn was exposed to east coast club & electronic music, which always had a special place in his heart. His record collection is an example of a true connoisseur of the genre, who has travelled the world extensively. Working with everyone from Vijay Iyer to George Lewis, Tyshawn is one of the most sought after composers and improvisors
in music, he had yet to explore his electronic side, except for his occasional unannounced dj sets!
King Britt's continued contribution to the advancement of electronic music, producing or remixing everyone from Solange to Miles Davis, help solidify
his native Philadelphia as a necessary point on the map for dance music enthusiasts. Growing up in a household of jazz fusion, funk and soul, his love
of the electronic heroes of those genres, pushed him to explore djing and improvising with musicians using the cutting edge technologies available.
These two titans went into the studio for 2 days, which happen to fall right before the world went into lockdown in 2019. With no rehearsals, direction or
plan, armed with drums & synths, these two did what they do best and created a sonic documentation of fearless exploration into polyrhythmic time
travel. They were channeling and conjuring sounds from an alternate universe, releasing whatever emotions were in the moment. They were
focused on the journey leaving the destination in the listener's mind.
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