Pitchfork

Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) may have taken things to the 21st century with his Everything Ecstatic Part II DVD/CD release (which, by the way, dropped in North America on Tuesday), but now he's got his sights set on the 20th century sounds of Miles Davis, James Brown, Fats Domino. Steve Reid, the legendary jazz drummer who has performed with all three of the aforementioned illustrious artists (and many, many more), has chosen Hebden as his latest collaborator.

Last year, the Steve Reid Ensemble released the album Spirit Walk on Soul Jazz, which featured guest spots by Hebden. But their partnership didn't end there. On March 7 in the US, Domino will release The Exchange Session: Vol. 1, the first of two collaborative albums from the pair scheduled for this year.

According to a press release, Hebden had this to say about the record: "Everything is here. We were going to record the session and then put together the best bits into a definitive album. But we got excited by everything we put down and so decided to make it a complete document of that day. When you work with someone for the first time there is a naiveté that will never be there again. We shot all the photos for the artwork the same day, just to keep it pure."

Recorded in April 2005 at the Exchange in London, the improvised sessions are delivered on disc completely unedited and without overdubs. Damn son, that's about as pure as it gets.

"It has been so exciting for me because part of what I've wanted to do in my music-- soul and funk and jazz, all the American music that I love-- has been out of my reach. I'm used to making very controlled music where the computer keeps time. But I couldn't do that because Steve has to keep time, so it was an incredible liberation," Hebden explained.

The press release for The Exchange Session: Vol. 1 describes the album's sound as "redolent of dark jungles alive with closely proximate animal and insect life, and arcane tribal ceremonies involving trance states and the probable ingestion of some ground-up psychedelic root blown up your nose from a hollow reed, while all around perspectives shift and shapes mutate in the endless green on green world," which brings to mind two things, neither of which seem too closely tied with this collaboration: 1. acid, and 2. the fake Pitchfork album reviews David Cross wrote for us. The far-less-trippy tracklisting:

>>The Exchange Session: Vol. 1
01 Morning Prayer
02 Soul Oscillations
03 Electricity and Drum Will Change Your Mind

Each cut runs 10-15 minutes, and if that isn't enough for you, Vol. 2 is just around the corner, tentatively slated to hit stores in June. "I consider us to be pioneers, doing the electricity and the drums live. In the future this is going to be considered really important, but for now there's just this" Reid said.

"