James Holden & The Animal Spirits

In The Last Few Years Holden Has Only Released Collaborations Three Swirling Folk Dances With Moroccan Gnawa Musician Maalem Mahmoud Guinia And A 47-Minute Tribute To Minimalist Shaman Terry Riley With Tabla Player Camilo Tirado. The Animal Spirits Is An Album-Length Amalgamation Of All Of These Collaborative Projects Expanding His Live Setup With Tom Page To Include Saxophonist Etienne Jaumet Who Previously Lent His Freeform Skronk To The Inheritors Cornetist Marcus Hamblett Multi-Instrumentalist Liza Bec On Recorders And North African Ghaïta And Lascelle Gordon Of Free Jazz Group Woven Entity. It’s Also His Most Dramatic Rejection Yet Of Anything Resembling “dance Music” In The Functional DJ-Led Sense. The Album Was Recorded Live In One Room At Holden’s Sacred Walls Studio In London Single Takes No Overdubs No Edits. While His Modular Synth Still Guides Much Of The Melodic Harmonic And Rhythmic Material Holden Occupies The Role Of Bandleader Rather Than Frontman Simply Laying The Stage For His Collaborators’ Off-The-Cuff Creativity He Specifically Names Don Cherry And Pharoah Sanders As Inspirations Drawing A Link Between The Universal Preoccupations Of Their Spiritual Jazz Albums And The Sense Of Ritual Abandon At The Heart Of What Holden Calls “folk-Trance.” read less