Grave New World

Description

Under the name Nuke Watch, Chris Hontos and Aaron Anderson deliver a form of free improvisation that rejects noisy mannerisms and relies on a strange kind of sensory pleasure. Their tenth album, *Grave New World*, largely recorded as a trio and often live, presents itself as a mutant sonic organism: modular synths, percussion, bass, and modified wind instruments merge into a decaying electric world, saturated with new energies. The album creates a dialogue between several traditions without ever settling into any one of them. Otto Willberg's basslines evoke Percy Jones or Jaco Pastorius, while Leonard King imbues a dynamic similar to the grooves of Africa 70. The wind instruments—flute, saxophone, MIDI controller—all passed through electronic filters, blur the boundaries of jazz to better open up an unstable, plastic, almost fictional sonic space. Difficult to classify, *Grave New World* is a world-album, at the crossroads of experimental music, improvised music, and a techno-organic imagination. The result could resemble a global jam session, somewhere between a connected greenhouse overrun by children and the soundscapes of science fiction films. A total, unpredictable, and living fusion.