Solos and Duos Series: Joshua Abrams' Natural Information Society with Frank Rosaly
Bassist and composer Joshua Abrams has been in the thick of Chicago's vibrant music scene for 15 years, playing and recording as leader and sideman in projects across a wide number of genres.
He co-founded the minimalist band Town & Country, and with Matana Roberts and Chad Taylor, the trio Sticks & Stones. He has released four records under his own name, and appeared on over 50 recordings by Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake & Bindu, Nicole Mitchell and Ernest Dawkins.
He is a founding member of The Roots. Abrams scored the music for The Interrupters, the new film by Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz (Hoop Dreams), which premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival.
At the heart of Natural Information, his 2010 Eremite release, is the guimbri, a three-stringed animal hide bass traditionally used by the Gnawa of North Africa in healing ceremonies. Abrams creates intricate psychedelic environments that join the hypnotic, trance-like character of Gnawa music to more contemporary music and methodologies. Brown Rice-era Don Cherry, Sandy Bull's "blend" recordings and Can's "magic" albums are appropriate historical reference points.
“Joshua Abrams has delivered one of the rough gems of the post-everything musical era in Natural Information,” writes Ben Ratliff in the New York Times. In The Wire, Brian Morton called the record, “quietly evanescent, scattered with sudden breathtaking glimpses, and insistently uplifting.”
Frank Rosaly, who performs on Natural Information, is a Chicago-based drummer and composer who has become an integral part of Chicago’s vibrant improvised music, experimental, rock and jazz communities. He is active in groups led by Matana Roberts, Rob Mazurek, Jason Adasievicz, and the Jeff Parker/Nels Cline Quartet, performs solo and leads his own ensembles, including his clarinet sextet, Cicatas Music. Rosaly teaches percussion and organizes the Ratchet Series, a weekly showcase of creative music at the Skylark in Chicago.
“Drummer Frank Rosaly has a sharp sense of time, an imaginative vocabulary, and a knack for knowing just what a given context requires,” writes Peter Margasak. “He’s also developed a rigorous solo practice, where he focuses on color and texture using a hybrid setup of percussion and electronics... his approach is distinctively elegant and controlled.”
