back to
Infrequent Seams
We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

#entrainments

by James Ilgenfritz

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $9 USD  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    images of the CD coming soon.

    Includes unlimited streaming of #entrainments via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days

      $12 USD or more 

     

  • Cassette + Digital Album

    product images coming soon

    Includes unlimited streaming of #entrainments via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days

      $9 USD or more 

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 12 James Ilgenfritz releases available on Bandcamp and save 20%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Stay Logged In On This Trusted Device, Museum of Invisible Things, Works by Benjamin Patterson / Alvin Singleton / Wilfrido Terrazas / Niloufar Shiri, #entrainments, Ekphrastic Discourse, The Ticket That Exploded, Trust Fall, You Scream A Rapid Language, and 4 more. , and , .

    Excludes subscriber-only releases.

    Purchasable with gift card

      $83.20 USD or more (20% OFF)

     

1.
#frontmatter 06:27
2.
#saladdays 08:29
3.
#scarequotes 07:35
4.
#omnibus 06:55
5.
#facepalm 05:07
6.

about

There is a subtle aura of shadow and light surrounding the recording session for #entrainments, caused by the extenuating circumstances around the project. The plans for the tour and recording session had been set in early 2017, but the project was almost completely derailed that summer by the cognitive and neurological complications surrounding the discovery of a new brain tumor and my subsequent brain surgery operation in July 2017. After that surgery I developed a condition called Aphasia, which is common with people who’ve had a stroke. With therapy I was able to recover the ability to speak and write my name (though I still struggle with word recall deficit, a slight stutter, and difficulty concentrating).

To have been able to continue with my plans to travel by myself to Europe to record and tour with my old friends Angelika Niescier and Nathan Bontrager, together with one of my oldest musical influences, drummer Gerry Hemingway, just a few months after this difficult experience was a phenomenal recovery. Many plans for the recording session had to be adapted in order to proceed, and between my (benign) brain tumor ordeal and the global pandemic occasioned by COVID-19, it is a major triumph for this project to now find its realization in this form. I owe eternal gratitude to those who supported me during that period.

Moreover, this recording serves not only as an arrival point, but as a point of departure, because these works also serve as the first major statement on a new compositional system called #entrainments. Bringing influences from the AACM and the New York and European jazz and improvised music scenes together with concepts from conceptual art and literature worlds associated with Fluxus, Marcel Duchamp, Lorna Simpson, David Hammons, Charles Gaines, Anne Waldman, William Burroughs, and William Kentridge, the #entrainments series deals with musical form in ways that can be restructured in live performance.

Disparate components of the composed and improvised materials are now disassembled, becoming available for recall at various points in a live performance, revealing a continuous interplay between structure and intuition. There is a limited set of hand gestures and cues borrowed or adapted from some of the innovations of late-20th-century improvised music practices associated with Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, John Zorn, Walter Thompson, and the focus on mindfulness presented by Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations and Deep Listening practices.

These cues enable real-time restructuring of the composed materials and improvisation strategies. Melodies may appear primarily as supportive material, while the “metadata” of creative expression may become the focal point. The titles of all works in this series are presented as hashtags, highlighting the indexical and interchangeable aspects of the system. By redirecting strategies around “big data,” the #entrainments series reclaims systems that were designed to control and subjugate. There is an urgency about this continuous interpenetration of structure, intuition, patience, and mindfulness: as a species, humans are in the process of adapting to the relatively new challenges and opportunities presented by the linguistics of our encoded anthropocene (the period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to constitute a distinct geological change). Entrainment is about aligning one’s thinking and behavior within existing systems. The survival of the creative spirit and the survival of free will are in this way inextricably linked.

credits

released May 26, 2023

Angelika Niescier - alto saxophone
Nathan Bontrager - cello
James Ilgenfritz - contrabass, compositions
Gerry Hemingway - drums

Recorded by Christian Heck at Loft Koeln
Mixed by James Ilgenfritz
Mastered by Elliott Sharp at Studio zOaR
Graphic Design by Dustin Krcatovich / Golden Feelings
Photography by James Ilgenfritz

© 2023 James Ilgenfritz / Mountain of Signs (ASCAP)

license

tags

about

James Ilgenfritz New York, New York

Composer/bassist James Ilgenfritz is recognized in The Wire & The New Yorker for his “characteristic magnanimity” and "glint of mischief.” James had residencies at John Zorn’s The Stone in 2015 & 2017. He’s worked with Anthony Braxton, Thomas Buckner, David First, Pauline Oliveros, & Roscoe Mitchell. He directs Infrequent Seams & has recorded for Cuneiform, Clean Feed, Important Records, & Tzadik. ... more

contact / help

Contact James Ilgenfritz

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

James Ilgenfritz recommends:

If you like James Ilgenfritz, you may also like: