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Bill Orcutt, Steve Shelley, and Ethan Miller are no strangers to playing with each other and this September they released their debut album, a live recording of the first live set they ever played together and the set that's inspired every one of their shows since. Aligning with the ethos of jazz or jam music, each time they play the song, it's a different version, a cover of itself almost. On Friday evening, the trio ripped Brooklyn's Union Pool to shreds with their brilliant noise tracks that were built around Steve Shelley and Ethan Miller's liquid rhythms and Bill Orcutt's spiraling guitar. Using his axe as a weapon of sonic destruction, Orcutt fired away with blistering solos of angular guitar madness that exercised no wave demons from the ether as his atonal bursts of noise surged throughout the room. On bass, Ethan Miller's muddy chords softened the electric clangs and brutal, metallic twangs of Orcutt's ferocity and gave some padding to the noise, but made sure to keep the frenetic pace in tact. Behind the kit, Steve Shelley bashed away at his steady grooves, finding the perfect fills to compliment the erratic melodies that were shrieking from the guitar in front of him while pounding away with absolute force. No strangers to the avant-garde, this trio has combined their forces to bring out a noise-rock flavored jam band that can dabble in free-styling progressions like the best of them, following their groove to the farthest stretches and tipping the scale just enough to bring things to an almost state of collapse before revealing they've been firmly in control the entire time. With his leg over his knee and rather laid back in his chair, Orcutt delivered these gnarly riffs with the utmost chill, looking at total ease while his hand move franticly across his fret board, almost like it was possessed and acting to break free. The juxtaposition to the rest of his body language as he tore into each song was a sight itself, but pairing it with Miller's wavy side steps as he rocked back and forth, notably the only member standing for the set, he was locked in and watching over his band mates with total concentration and care. Meeting eyes with Shelley to nail the rhythm while also observing Orcutt's wandering finger styling, he never lost the moment and held things together like glue. Near the halfway mark of the set, which consisted of the new album in-full, Orcutt announced a new song that the trio had written on tour and mentioned being open to suggestions for the title. Seemingly a natural progression, the track fit in solidly with the rest of the their work, another tune that steadily comes together as they find their connections and link into a feverish jam that explodes with fire and epic volumes of sound. The experimental nature of their approach to music could seem intense, but the trio does a tremendous job of making the music flavorful and groovy, nothing overwhelms the senses and there are plenty of airy bass lines that really help ground things. Wrapping things up in their final dizzying crescendo, the band brought it all together in one swirling harmony before Orcutt raised his guitar overhead and stuck his pick directly beneath a string, immediately cutting the sound and his bandmates hit the cue as well, nailing the finish on a dime. After an hour of chaotic and cacophonous noise jams, the band brought it to an end with sonic and near surgical precision. If you've been paying attention to Bill Orcutt's work at all over the past half-decade (and if you haven't, what are you doing?), you know Orcutt's music has fit the range of solo guitarist work, his own one man looped quartet, and other inspired collaborators, but the work he's doing with this power trio is certainly some of his best and they deserve to be celebrated as a whole. A new post-rock noise jam band for the future.
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