LP Edition of 100.
$25
Lovely limited vinylization of the fantastic set performed by this father/daughter duo on June 25, 2022. Beautifully recorded by Kevin Reilly, and issued on CD through his Relative Pitch label, we could not resist reissuing the set as an LP.
The music was recorded at a Feeding Tube label event held at Tubby’s in Kingston, NY, deep in the midst of the Plague Era. For a bunch of us, this show was the first time we’d been out to a club in a while so there was an a extra element of liberation stirred into the semiotic mix (not that Dietrichs’s music ever lacks liberation as its prime element). The opening sets, by Magnificent Pussies and the Wednesday Knudsen/Willie Lane Duo, were excellent. But both outfits performed inside a fairly contained sonic corridor.
This is not an approach favored by Dietrichs. From first note to last, their attack was a blazing, harrowing and FREE assault on the senses. Camille Dietrich dug her bow deep into the guts of the cello, raking out shards of split tones that crashed into Don’s sax splinters so hard it was like discovering what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. The answer? Sheer wailing sonic pleasure.
Obviously we have been digging Don’s sax assaults since the early days of Borbetomagus. That outfit created such an insane universe of sound (where free jazz met free rock met free noise on equal terms) it’s almost impossible to overpraise their music. But the individual players have maintained these high standards on all their related projects as well. This has been especially true of this duo, which we’ve been aware of for at least the last seven years.
Apparently, Camille was not intimidated by the squall that sometimes enveloped her childhood home in Nyack NY. I know very few details about her full back story, but the power and sonic aggression of her playing with her dad are incredible. Most people I’ve seen try to play with Don end up pulling everything back so he can steamroll over them. Camille does no such thing. She just plows straight into him, and the results are dense, beautiful and complex.
This was one of those sets where I went into an almost autistic fugue state, rocking back and forth with my eyes screwed shut, just soaking in the shower of sounds. And it won’t be exactly the same when you’re sitting at home in a comfy chair, but it can be be damn close.
And sometimes that is enough.
–Byron Coley, 2024
