Ergo - Multitude, Solitude

SKU RUNE 289
Ergo is a trio made up of Carl Maguire on Rhodes electric piano and analog synths and effects, Shawn Baltazor on drums and lead by Brett Sroka on trombone and laptop. They have been playing together since 2003, combining the modern sound of electronica and beyond with jazz and ambient music. The basic building blocks of their sound are beats and electronics, trombone, the Fender Rhodes and drums. The music is very modern and it's also very accessible while remaining something that hold active interest. In the early 2000s, Brett began exploring beyond his jazz background and became fascinated with electronic music, surrounding himself with synthesizers and software. As he sought to reconcile the six hundred years of technology between trombone and computer he also found musicians of similarly elastic and adventurous temperaments. As they continued to play together, an idiosyncratic dynamic began to cohere and Ergo was born. With their debut cd, the band put forth a statement of purpose and were lauded by AllAboutJazz-NY for “Best Debut CD” of 2006. Multitude, Solitude is Ergo’s sophomore CD and brings the band further into it’s own. Ergo's music is fresh and very different - jazz musicians exploring the boundaries of electronic music - and one of stark melodic beauty, enveloping electro-acoustic texture and empathic imagination. Their music has been compared to music as diverse as Duke Ellington, Autechre, Sigur Ros, Sun Ra, and King Crimson, but interesting as those comparisons are, they don't really sound like any of them. They just sound like Ergo. Their music is one of stark melodic beauty, enveloping electro-acoustic texture and empathic imagination. They have refined a unique style of unadorned melody and intrepid improvisation with a sensual approach to the post-modern techniques of sampling, synthesis and signal processing.

"...explores the intersections of electronic music, jazz improvisation, and smart rock bands...using these to good effect on this moody and memorable recording." – Cadence

"...timbral sophistication, spacey contours and slinky grooves." – Time Out New York

"As jazz leans away from characteristics that so defined its earliest days, groups are emerging with unorthodox instrumental combinations, fleshed out by the vast potential of technological soundscaping. Ergo, at its core, seems as unconventional as they get—trombone, keyboards, drums—creating music that wouldn't have been possible before relatively recent innovations in sound processing and sampling/looping.... For fans of the improvised, electronics-centric music heralded by the Norwegian musicians in the extended Punkt family, Multitude, Solitude is a seamlessly organic album of quietude that commands attention from its very first moments." – John Kelman/All About Jazz

"...the trio dubbed Ergo represents a new era in music making where chill and improvisation meet headlong in the personal computer-driven age. Blessed with reputations as leaders in their own right, trombonist Brett Sroka and keyboardist Carl Maguire merge separate and distinct identities in creative jazz-oriented music to create urban, rural and atmospheric soundscapes that go to the far side of any discernible influences, including that of Eno, Sun Ra, Autechre, or Curtis Fuller. There's a tuneful quality, consistent drones and spikes that suggest industrialism, retro fusion via Maguire's Fender Rhodes electric piano, and even an underground bop aesthetic fueled by post-art rock and tempered with the romanticism of Sigur Rós. The trio has also been signified as embracing a laconic existentialism, but you'll hear them go well beyond any strictly defined tones, into completely new horizons similar to nothing you've heard before. Sroka is an accomplished and legitimate jazz trombone player as you clearly hear during his melodic passages on "Little Shadow," an underwater mermaid song carried across the waves of drummer Shawn Baltazor's cymbal rolls and washes. Overdubbed layers of Sroka's slide horn in light clarion echoes identifies the waltz on the Mars motif of "She Haunts Me." But he's playing music on a computer for the bulk of this recording alongside Maguire's Prophet synthesizer and electronics, as punctuated in the extended track "Vessel," as late-night aural beacons in a modern space ballad constantly ebb and flow. The spookier side of the Rhodes piano with synth swells expands exponentially, as electric taps and quivers cement the core values of "Rana Sylvatica." There's no lack of patience and virtue heard on the appropriately titled "Endlessly," where development of the spontaneous composition is taken in measured, tiny steps that never break stride or burst out in over-exuberance. A faux tango in surreal dialog is defined in cries of lonely despair on "Actuator," where the Internet and vacuous connections are an only friend, triggered by these wanton, adept musicians. Ergo has touched on something quite unique and cool in contemporary fusion music with Multitude, Solitude, reaching into and past modern creative, ambient music or mere basic electronica. Teamwork, acute listening skills, and hegemony are a few of the many common threads employed in making this captivating, hypnotic, and attractively exotic music..." – Michael G. Nastos/All Music Guide

You can hear a track off of their album here





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  • LabelCuneiform
  • UPC045775028927
Your Price $15.00
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