Altered Zones

To fans of New York No Wave, Rhys Chatham is known as the minimalist composer who unknowingly spearheaded the noise rock genre in the late '70s when he plugged repetition à la Morton Subotnik and La Monte Young into the squall of an electric guitar. 2005's A Crimson Grail, which toured the globe and had the particularity of being scored for an orchestra of 100-400 guitarists, revived interest in the Paris-based expat's seminal early works, including 1977's Guitar Trio, and 1982's Drastic Classicism, a collaboration with "punk ballerina" Karole Armitage.

One little known fact about Chatham is that he is actually much more of a trumpet wizard than a guitar one; in fact, the majority of the works he composed in the interim were scored for some combination of brass, winds, percussion, and voice. Outdoor Spell, his latest full-length offering on new Brooklyn imprint Northern-Spy, is a shimmering, overtone-drenched pas de deux for trumpet and voice-- both performed by Chatham himself. "Corn Maiden's Rite," one of the album's four long pieces, is swarming bee hive of drones and breathy sound swatches, boltstered by Beatriz Rojas on the Peruvian cajon.

Corn Maiden's Rite by Northern-Spy Records

Outdoor Spell CD is out now on Brooklyn's Northern Spy in LP, CD, and MP3/FLAC formats. Visit Rhys Chatham's website for a list of upcoming US tour dates and an essay on why he switched from electric guitar to fuzz trumpet in the early '90s