FLORATONE

The four-person collective project known as Floratone is made up of four well-known individual artists: guitarist Bill Frisell, drummer Matt Chamberlain, and producers/engineers Lee Townsend and Tucker Martine; all of whom have wide-ranging résumés. As a group they have, in the 21st century, built upon the same intuitive, close collaborative spirit that brought producer Teo Macero and Miles Davis together on monumental recordings such as Bitches Brew and On the Corner -- though this group's music is in a different realm entirely. Floratone began simply as a long-planned but very informal marathon improv jam session between Frisell and Chamberlain in 2005. After it took place, Townsend and Martine took the session tapes and trimmed them, focused them, added special effects: loops, samples, and other ambient sounds. They eventually painstakingly transformed them into 11 songs. Delighted with the results, Frisell took the tapes back and wrote string and horn parts into read more...