TED BYRNES – Words Have Two Meanings CD

Nine guests feature on this exquisite new full length from Ted Byrnes, with each collaborator rousing a different side of the percussionist’s improvisatory self. Words Have Two Meanings commences with a duet with Sam McKinlay (The Rita), in which Byrnes scuttles feverishly beneath an electronic mimicry of dribbled rain on tarpaulin. The record proceeds to zag between extremities of energy and volume: intricate free-jazz splatter with Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker, incantatory vocal drones and glacial quiver with Zola Jesus and noise-wracked junkyard excavation with William Hutson of Clipping. Yet these stylistic pivots occur within an overarching coherence, with the percussionist acting as the vital adhesive. As always with Byrnes, textural verbosity is the constant – he spills off the kit and smashes into all manner of material miscellanea, collapsing the boundary between instrument and object, treating all as proponents of primal energetic release.

Mixed and mastered by William Hutson
Art and design by Michael D. Brown