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CG 120
The Giant Pin
The Nels Cline Singers
Nels Cline is the new guitarist for the band Wilco. After several years of touring the U.S. and Europe honing their sound, The Nels Cline Singers present their second recording entitled, "The Giant Pin." While the core group consists of electric guitar, acoustic bass and drums, (no singers), there are some notable guest artists on this recording; including keyboardist Jon Brion and vocalist Greg Saunier of Deerhoof. This is a mature work from the leader that Jazz Times has called, "The world's most dangerous guitarist."
The Giant Pin is available now!
Reviews
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Pushing jazz into territory usually reserved for hardcore, ambient, and dark wave electronica, the Nels Cline Singers' latest release, The Giant Pin, employs a wide array of electronics, musical technique, and compositional audacity to produce a sonically varied, deadly experimental amalgam of genres and styles. Incorporating undulating waves of pure texture, metal-loud drum beats, and distortion-laden guitar as well as minimalist, floating soundscapes with traditional jazz vernacular and improvisational structures, the Nels Cline Singers have done what all of jazz’s pantheon are honored for trying: they've stepped forward into the future of sound. Without a single word.
Heirs to the John Zorn-Mick Harris-fueled Painkiller legacy, the Nels Cline Singers display more than just the courage, vision, and sheer audacity to attempt such a project and release it on a jazz label. They also possess the requisite musical skills necessary to make their experiment an unbridled success. More than a series of establishment challenging forays into the joy of rule-breaking, The Giant Pin accomplishes the rarest of all feats, irrespective of genre. It presents a spectrum of material that despite both its diversity and explorative nature remains thematically consistent and of unerring quality. Key to the album's beauty is group's willingness to expand the jazz vernacular by delving into musical and thereby emotional realms usually overlooked.
Selections like "He Still Carries A Torch For Her," an album highlight, prove how savvy the Nels Cline Singers are in their approach. Beginning with traditional improvisatory exchanges between guitar, bass, and drums, the piece slowly moves into increasingly electric and dissonant territory. As the dissonance thickens, the improvisations grow wilder and wilder, the textures denser, the tempo faster, until finally the piece crescendos.
Frank A. Matzner All About Jazz [6/12/04]
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In the tradition of all great forward-leaning guitar trios, The Nels Cline Singers take their music both inside and out.
It all begins rather sublimely with guitarist Nels Cline's "Blues Too," an easygoing affair with a simple arrangement and nice swing beat. Things get started when "Fly Fly" hits with Cline's pedal effects and distortion, a frantic arrhythmic beat and a stop-on-a-dime arrangement that allows all three members to show off their deep-listening skills. Cartoonish in nature, aggressive in attitude, "Fly Fly" is jazz-meets-noise-rock, and a real indication of what The Nels Cline Singers are all about.
"The Ballad of Devin Hoff" is a feature for bassist Devin Hoff that shows off his deep roots in the jazz tradition. Cline and drummer Scott Amendola hold back in supportive roles, while Hoff states the theme and improvises with his rich, woody tone. "Something About David H." combines both the reflective, almost ambient sound the group is capable of with a dramatic shift toward an outward-bound rock groove. That The Nels Cline Singers can move between the outlandish and the soft-spoken indicates a well-grounded sense of communication between the band members.
John Ephland Downbeat [11/1/04]
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No single album contains the breadth of guitarist Nels Cline's talents, but "The Giant Pin" makes an excellent introduction to the solo work of Wilco's newest member. Cline has been making records since Wilco's leader Jeff Tweedy, was in grade school, and he can dish out straight-ahead jazz, tooth-powdering rock, corroded country and western, and amorphous ambient soundscapes with equal facility.
The latest effort by his ironically named instrumental trio is an impressive work that weds jazz's harmonic sophistication to rock'n'roll's physical impact without short-changing either genre.
Bill Moyer Chicago Tribune [11/04]
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The second CD for the wittily named band The Nels Cline Singers, an instrumental outside the lines jazz group, arrives in the wake of Cline's enlistment as Wilco's go-to guitarist. With band mates Devin Hoff on bass and Scott Amendola on drums, Cline launches into free-wheeling improvisation territory on The Giant Pin that is at once
angular, sweet, bristling, assaultive and gripping. The trio rocks with crunch on "Fly Fly," smears and scratches with electronics through the melodic "He Still Carries a Torch for Her," paints an eerie soundscape on "Something About David H." with guest keyboardist Jon Brion dabbing in sonic color, and muses with quiet beauty on "Watch Over Us." Cline's guitar voice speaks in many tongues - lyrical single-note picking, straight-up strumming, metal-infused bashing, geometric searching - on a disc that rewards with adventure and surprise.
Dan Ouelette Billboard [11/04]
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Guitarist Cline is a charter member of the Southland's minimal jazz avant-garde, crossing easily from improvisational music to edgy contemporary rock. Iconoclasm reigns in this second album from the Singers (who, in appropriately ironic fashion, consist only of instrumentalists - Devin Hoff, bass, and Scott Amendola, drums). There are intriguing musical pleasures to be found in tracks that rove between progressive rock, electronica, hypnotic grooves and straight-ahead jazz.
Don Heckman L.A. Times [1-2-05]
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