Battle Trance

Genre-defying is the term that Brooklyn’s New Amsterdam label uses to describe saxophone quartet Battle Trance, led by Travis Laplante (and full of players with experience on the avant-jazz circuit). It's a stock phrase, perhaps, though they're correct to use it here: Given the overlapping sheets of drone that these players emit, the traditional jazz beat is nowhere to be found in what amounts to a new-classical work, titled Palace of Wind. Imagine the slow-moving drones of Morton Feldman heated up via the multiphonics and circular-breathing drones that come from the language of improv titans like as Evan Parker, and you'll be in the neighborhood. And whether you come to contemporary music from the experimental-classical side or the the avant-jazz side, you should find a comfortable home in this wild, enveloping sound.