‘Attachments isn’t background music—it’s two side-long dives into birth, death, and the mess in between – Four more pieces from the same recording date exist, but vinyl has its limits, so those show up only as digital extras. What’s on the record, though, is enough: two journeys that refuse to resolve neatly, but feel alive in the way improvised music should—raw, searching, and unwilling to settle’.

Attachments featuring Jorg Schneider (LP, Feeding Tube/Cardinal Fuzz) is made up of two side-length tracks “Death Mask” and “Born in a Storm,” meditative longform journeys exploring the themes of death and birth. German drummer Jorg Schneider has been a longtime friend and collaborator of Przemyslaw Drazek and Brent Fuscaldo (formerly of Mako Sica), having released records together under the name Havre de Grace on labels No Index and Somnimage. Recording on previous efforts took place closer to Jorg’s home in Western Germany and for this time around Jorg traveled to Chicago to record with Drazek Fuscaldo at Electrical Audio.

“Death Mask” is kinetic right out of the gate with propulsive drumming and a guitar looping sequence that provides the framework for the trumpet to tell a story. The real-time guitar riff is sampled and played back in different fractions to which Schneider reacts with scattered beats to the electronic blips and bleeps. After the high-energy free jazz simmers and the smoke clears a maraca rhythm emerges along with a bluesy guitar and vocals enter the picture. “Dream through forest, fly through many thorns that bleed” unravel as lyrics over a more subdued floorbed after the chaos. The trumpet bookends the track with a final breatħ.

“Born in a Storm” begins with a long gateway of floating ambience. A cyclical texture that is joined in the background with bells and percussion that decorates the space. A guitar enters with atmospheric notes adding to the color then a deep vocal mantra, multi-layered, takes over. Drums and a dubby bassline add to the bouquet of sound. Lastly, the trumpet carries with it an air of otherworldly bliss. Wildly different than the first track but altogether shows a spectrum of what this trio can explore together with improvisation.

Recorded in Studio B with engineer Taylor Hales, who has worked on several records together over the years, has done a fantastic job with capturing the presence and vividness of the music. He engineered June 22, which featured Chicago titans Joshua Abrams, Tatsu Aoki, Thymme Jones and longtime collaborator Hamid Drake. This album featured more “songs,” which still had drawn-out passages of improvisation, but felt more structured. Attachments goes further in each direction of chaos and ambience. The four additional tracks heard here from the session will be available as bonus downloads but due to the time constraints of physical media will be left off the LP.

Drazek Fuscaldo with Jörg A. Schneider

Releases

Attachments