Build by Build

Build is the eponymous debut release of composer/violinist Matt McBane’s quintet, Build. McBane notes that the album represents a synthesis of “many of the divergent types of music that have been floating around in my head and fingers for years … infused with a sense of open space, light, and motion on one hand, and interior emotions on the other.” The album’s compositions take inspiration from sources as disparate as bluegrass fiddle music in “Magnet” to Reichian minimalism in “Drivin’,” yet together form a cohesive journey through a “surreal wonderland” that is “endlessly fascinating and often gorgeous.” (Seattle Sound Magazine).

Build was heralded by Blogcritics shortly after its release, who comparing the ensemble to the 1970′s unclassifiable Penguin Cafe Orchestra, wrote that the album “proves that you can make interesting and exciting contemporary music without torturing your listeners… [Build] could change the way you think about contemporary composition.” Soon after, like-minded critics praised McBane’s genre-defying, “fantastic intuitive sense” (Sequenza 21), and his pieces that are “challenging … but aren’t complicated for the sake of being complicated” (Grey Flannel Suit).