The music of GRID is a three-way chat. It's a conversation between musicians with differing musical opinions, but their debut album becomes a shared dialogue that is as fluid as it is improvised.The new four-track album on NNA Tapes, sees Matt Nelson (Battle Trance) on saxophone, Tim Dahl (Child Abuse) on bass, and Nick Podgurski (New Firmament; Feast of the Epiphany) on drums, turning toward the darker, heavier, and more psychedelic realms of improvised music that evokes unhinged 70s-era free jazz as well as droning doom and sludge.Take a listen to the track "(+/+)" and read some words from the band's Tim Dahl.Noisey: Doom jazz. Are you ok with this description?
Tim Dahl: If the listener wants or needs a genre-hybrid reference in order to connect or relate to the music, that's fine with me. With this said there was never a concept discussed before we started playing. Genre was never considered when making this music. It is essentially a conversation among three musicians who are coming from their own conditions and experiences. I can imagine some doom metal fans and some jazz fans enjoying this recording, but I can also imagine ones who wouldn't.People not familiar with free jazz may think the sound is chaotic but in these times chaos seems to be the norm. How does current political climate affect you creatively?
Some people have a harder time processing density in music than others. That's usually rooted in one's musical curiosity, experience and natural ability. The idea of many things going on at once at the same time in music is extremely old and by no means equals chaos. This idea has coexisted throughout many different and varied political climates. Art and society are independent moving planes that historically have gone in and out of phase with each other. Sometimes they've lined up together and often they have not. How the current political climate has affected us creatively is a hard thing to gauge. I would rather say that everything that we have experienced in our lives past and present has affected us creatively. This NNA release was recorded well before the current political climate.Would you say your music is bleak?
Since we have no lyrics I can't say our music has any literal meaning. If some people interpret it as bleak that's fine with me, but I would say they are most likely projecting their own feelings onto it. When my father would take me to the zoo as a child he would always tell me to listen to how other people would describe the animals they were observing. There would be some large mammal just sitting there and you would hear people say things like, "Aw…look how sad and miserable it is," or "Whoa!! that's a mean fucker!". They were trying to define their situation in order to connect with the experience. This process is consistent with how most people filter the arts and I'm ok with it as long as they don't insist that others see it or hear it the same way that they do.
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Tim Dahl: If the listener wants or needs a genre-hybrid reference in order to connect or relate to the music, that's fine with me. With this said there was never a concept discussed before we started playing. Genre was never considered when making this music. It is essentially a conversation among three musicians who are coming from their own conditions and experiences. I can imagine some doom metal fans and some jazz fans enjoying this recording, but I can also imagine ones who wouldn't.People not familiar with free jazz may think the sound is chaotic but in these times chaos seems to be the norm. How does current political climate affect you creatively?
Some people have a harder time processing density in music than others. That's usually rooted in one's musical curiosity, experience and natural ability. The idea of many things going on at once at the same time in music is extremely old and by no means equals chaos. This idea has coexisted throughout many different and varied political climates. Art and society are independent moving planes that historically have gone in and out of phase with each other. Sometimes they've lined up together and often they have not. How the current political climate has affected us creatively is a hard thing to gauge. I would rather say that everything that we have experienced in our lives past and present has affected us creatively. This NNA release was recorded well before the current political climate.Would you say your music is bleak?
Since we have no lyrics I can't say our music has any literal meaning. If some people interpret it as bleak that's fine with me, but I would say they are most likely projecting their own feelings onto it. When my father would take me to the zoo as a child he would always tell me to listen to how other people would describe the animals they were observing. There would be some large mammal just sitting there and you would hear people say things like, "Aw…look how sad and miserable it is," or "Whoa!! that's a mean fucker!". They were trying to define their situation in order to connect with the experience. This process is consistent with how most people filter the arts and I'm ok with it as long as they don't insist that others see it or hear it the same way that they do.
Grid's album is available March 24 on NNA Tapes.