Lados B

Description

On October 15 and 16, 2020, drummer Daniel Villarreal was joined by guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anna Butterss for two afternoons of recording in Los Angeles. For the three musicians, it was the first in-person ensemble recording session since the pandemic shut down the world seven months earlier. Some selected moments from these sessions ended up on Villarreal's critically acclaimed 2022 album Panama 77, but the majority of the music remained unreleased. Lados B is a deep dive into the high-level spontaneous music produced by Villarreal, Parker, and Butterss over those two days in 2020. You can hear Villarreal leading the group through various rhythmic modes and improvisational structures, while Parker and Butterss draw on their vast experience of playing freely together to build harmonic buoys for their spontaneous melodicism. The result is a beautifully vivid illustration of context, creativity, and collective composition at a particularly rich moment in history.