released April 28, 2023

Dave Rempis and Tim Daisy are two musicians whose work together over the last 25 years has been the cornerstone of countless improvising bands: Triage, Vandermark Five, Rempis Percussion Quartet, The Engines, Earscratcher, and their longstanding duo, to name a few. Over the last decade they’ve purposely found ways to shake their interaction up, reconstructing and redefining the possibilities to keep the music moving forward. Part of that approach has involved bringing in countless musicians as guests with their duo, to knock things every which way. On their last record – 2018’s Dodecahedron - they chose a panoply of improvisers whose approaches run the gamut of current experimental practice, including Jason Adasiewicz, Jim Baker, Zoots Houston, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Steve Swell, and Katie Young. Across the pandemic, they’ve used their ongoing concert series at Milwaukee’s Sugar Maple to do the same with guests including Russ Johnson, Michael Zerang, Jen Clare Paulson, Peter Maunu, and Jeb Bishop.

Amongst all of those collaborations and explorations, one such trio grouping stood out like leather pants at a PETA convention. When Chicago native Mark Feldman returned to the city during the pandemic, after decades in New York, Rempis and Daisy jumped on the opportunity. Feldman is a singular voice on an instrument with too few practitioners in the world of improvised music. His unparalleled technique and chameleon ability to absorb and dissect any musical style he delves into is astounding. Whether the gig is with John Zorn, Muhal Richard Abrams, Loretta Lynn, or John Abercrombie, Feldman is there. Thrown in with Rempis and Daisy on several gigs in 2022, Feldman laser-beamed in on precisely what makes their language tick, and wrapped himself into it like a warm coat. But in doing so, he also found ways to splinter it apart from the inside out.

On Sirocco, you hear him teasing slow-wavering long tones against the horn, throwing sharp jabs of articulation back at Daisy’s kit, and bouncing impossibly quick counterpoint back at both of them across five octaves. With those maneuvers, Feldman capitalizes on his boulevard-wide technique to bust up any of the time-tested tropes that Rempis and Daisy might try to roll out, forcing them to reconstruct their decades of interaction into a new immediate sound. But it’s never a struggle or conflict, simply an ongoing set of questions and proposals, posed by a master of the form. If you’re looking for a primer on artistic reinvention, here you go.