Branches by Evan Parker and Bill Nace

For his last solo record ‘Through a Room’, Bill Nace shifted his usual saturated guitar sound and added tapes, hurdy gurdy, doughnut pipe, bird calls and the mysterious Japanese taishōgoto. Setting up for the final night of his three day residency at OTO with only the taishōgoto soundchecked, Nace hoped that Parker would arrive with his small soprano as its opposite. “I’ve been interested in state change, you know, playing until there’s a shift in time.” Known for his development of multiphonics to produce a constantly shifting pattern, Evan Parker has evolved an instantly recognisable sound - his work the soprano most distinct. Happily, it was the soprano Evan brought with him and as soon as the two start to play they entwine - taking off in a double helix of keys and reed primed for endless reconfiguration. Space warps under the velocity of playing, the pitch rising unrelentingly. It felt like unending lift off in the room, sheer energy until the last note makes remember your feet have been on the floor the whole time. Total time bending shredding.

"This sound world of Bill’s two-stringed taishōgoto on this Café OTO night worked beautifully with Evan Parker’s improvisatory saxophone conceptions. The duology achieved instant lift off at ground zero only to find it’s eventual finale as if it were organically ordained. Time seemingly morphed from its ancient human construct of control, rendered inconsequential to the torrential transcendence of the room wildly activated by the magic resonance of the multi-directional pan-spatial sonance of the music as if it were some beatific blessing. It was one of those nights where art as a liberating force of spirit gifted the listeners with an offering of exaltation and joy. It was entirely mystical and mind blowing. A night of Total Music." - Thurston Moore, London, 2025

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Bill Nace / electric two string taishōgoto
Evan Parker / soprano saxophone

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Edition of 500 released as a split with Bill Nace's Open Mouth Records. If you're in the USA we advise you buy locally.

"The piece possesses exceptional cathartic beauty, with a power that seems to emerge from the mists of time, yet it feels more essential and compelling than any modernity. The 40-minute performance, built on loops and repetitions, forms a seamless whole that is impossible to pause, let alone stop. It is an experience that hypnotizes the mind into a marvellous trance, where the intensity of the performance fades behind the beauty of the perfect complementarity of sounds and the music shared by these two musicians.

Branches is an exceptional release." - Best of Jazz

ln The Human Province, Elias Canetti writes "lt is not enough to think, one also has to breathe. Dangerous are the thinkers who have not breathed enough." In Evan Parker's music, thought and breath are continuous, each the instrument and measure of the other.

Stuart Broomer, Coda 1995

evanparker.com