If Bela Bartok scored a film-noir soundtrack to be performed by the Count Basie Orchestra you’d end up with one jarring, syncopated, but swinging cluster of sound. This is exactly the kind of unique fusion (in the best sense of the word) that Avenue A Ensemble has cooked up for us on their latest exploration of new “sonic possibilities.” It is a tense and suspenseful listen while the UK-based group simultaneously invokes the spirit of angular, 20th-century Minimalism AND the lush, melodramatic tendencies of Hollywood’s Golden Age...
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