HAVING in the past laid down the rhythmic anchor for artists as diverse as Zola Jesus and LA’s experimental hiphop collective clipping, among an absolute host of others, sticksman in demand Ted Byrnes has stepped out, stepped forward and stepped back to the intense, raw roots of the drum for his new album of solo percussive workouts, My Body Moving Through Space, out mid-July; and he’s dropped a video for the first of the sextet of tracks therein, “Preparation”. Steel yourself and give in to the primeval below.
A blistering thrum, a dizzying skitter of out-jazz impressionism, the track comes with a video from Abigail Taubman and Tarrah Krajnak, which offsets the scattershot percussive exploration with slow-moving, monochrome shots of a body at rest.
Moving My Body Through Space is a full workout for your ears, and sees Ted inviting you to be seduced by the cacopohony, left breathless and he floods every nook and cranny with sound and fractured groove.
It’s his second full-lengther of solo percussion for Arkeen, following last year’s Tactility, of which there’s still a bare handful of new copies left.
An alumnus of Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, Ted’s made his home where free improvisation meets studied electro-acoustic work, new music and harsh noise. Moving My Body Through Space is, we’re told, a meditation on the concept of space in his work. Space appears as pregnant, timbre-filled liminal spaces in “Spin” or filled to the absolute brim like the corona around an eclipse on the full-kit workout on “Metal”. Objects are manipulated, struck and shaken to explore every potential sound on “As If A Friend”.
Alongside Zola Jesus and clipping, Ted’s worked with people such as O Sees’ John Dwyer, Jeff Parker, Charlemagne Palestine, Torsten Muller, Mike Watt and the legendary Maher Shalal Hash Baz.
Ted Byrnes’ Moving My Body Through Space will be released digitally by Arkeen Records on July 16th and is available to pre-order now at the label’s Bandcamp page.
