Violinist Sarah Neufeld and saxophone extraordinaire Colin Stetson have done plenty of out-there stuff on their own, but their new collaborative LP Never were the way she was is some seriously crazy-sounding shit, with low drones, tone webs, and guttural inflections making for an experimental album that's as physical as it is otherworldly. It's out April 28 via Constellation, but you can hear it right here, right now.
"Never were the way she was is guided by the metaphorical narrative of the life of a girl who ages slow as mountains; excited, exalted, and ultimately exiled in her search for a world that resembles her experience," the pair told FADER. "The album's expansive sonic trajectory and multiplicity of structures and voicings belies the fundamental economy of two acoustic instruments combining in real time. The result is a musical chronicle that powerfully establishes its own spatial and temporal horizon, a soundtrack that requires no images but profoundly compels the imaginative."
Lead image: Scott Irvine and Kim Meinelt
