Chicago Underground Trio To Release New Album on Thrill Jockey
Slon, farewell, auf weidersehn, goodbye

[Posted Monday, December 1st, 2003 04:00:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

It's only natural that Chicago-- a city known for rock music that aspires to the technical complexity, virtuosic intelligence and searching, improvisational spirit of jazz-- would also produce jazz that yearns to be post-rock or IDM. The Chicago Underground Trio, who flesh out their fusion, bop and free-jazz experiments with glitchy electronic textures and samples, are preparing to release Slon, their first album for Thrill Jockey. This is a little misleading-- while this is indeed the first Trio record for Thrill Jockey, they've already curated several releases by the Chicago Underground Duo and Quartet, which are various permutations of members of the Chicago Underground collective. Maintaining their modern hipster/classic jazz dialectic, the collective's other records were released by Delmark, the celebrated jazz label. The Chicago Underground revolves around cornetist Rob Mazurek, who, in Trio mode, is supported by bassist Noel Kupersmith and drummer Chad Taylor. Slon was recorded and mixed by Tortoise/Directions in Music egghead Bundy K. Brown.

A Thrill Jockey representative told Pitchfork that Slon is "not as electronically focused as the last two Duo albums," but "more electronic than any of the Delmark-released Chicago Underground albums." And also, one would assume, smaller than a bread box, but larger than a grain of sand. Thrill Jockey also informed us that the album was originally titled Protest and that the material was developed during the Trio's "No War" tour of Europe this past April. It is dedicated to "all the people who have lost their lives at the hands of U.S. imperialism." Man, those guys have got some cojones. Given the increasing provenance of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act and the rapid erosion of our civil liberties, soon George Bush will be able to teleport into our homes and wrap our mouths in duct-tape for saying stuff like that whether the ACLU likes it or not! Perhaps they should have called the album Protestes, in honor of their professional-grade massive balls.

But no, instead, the Trio went with Slon, a title of varied implication. "Slon" is the Trio's favorite hotel in Slovenia. "Slon" is also Slovenian for "elephant," which Thrill Jockey hints may be a subtle dig against a popular rock album you might remember (and a slon never forgets), or a reference to a certain buzz-band who gets a little nervous in the sunlight. Is the Chicago Underground Trio implying that Slovenians dislike rock and roll music? Or that name-checking pachyderms somehow increases one's chances of charting big numbers? We are confused, but trying.

These guys have a penchant for titling things in a misleading way: the last Chicago Underground Trio album was actually performed as a quartet, with Tortoise's Jeff Parker joining the melee on guitar. Not to mention that only one of the members lives in Chicago: Mazurek lives in rural Brazil and Taylor lives in Manhattan with his recently popped progeny. Collective "Awwwwwww." Well, at least they didn't name it whatever the Slovenian word for "tusk" is, or I'd hate to have to dig out the Fleetwood Mac references. The tracklist:

01 Protest
02 Slon
03 Zagreb
04 Sevens
05 Campbell Town
06 Kite
07 Palermo
08 Shoe Lace
09 Pear

Thrill Jockey: http://www.thrilljockey.com