Recording: Nashville Minimalism Unit

Artist: Nashville Minimalism Unit

Song: May Two Four [excerpt]

Recorded at Array Space (Invocation Presents), May 24, 2019.

Nashville Minimalism Unit - May Two Four [excerpt]

This Invocation show saw the eight-piece band opening up for a couple solo sets, but sharing with them a certain exploratory rootsiness. As always, Kurt Newman's group drew from both the weird improvisation and bluegrass/roots scenes, with some new faces from each complementing previous unitistes. There was also even more of an underlying sense of minimalist formalism is this set than at past NMU encounters, as if the band was setting out to create a hoedown version of a Terry Riley piece, familiar licks repeating and interlocking, and musicians catching up with and falling behind each other until finding a new phrase.

[You can hear the band's own recordings from this set over at their bandcamp. You can also catch Kurt Newman digging deeper into bluegrass this summer with a series of Instrumental Spectaculars at the Tranzac on Saturday afternoons.]