Freak Scene #50: F.I.M. Records Curates Free Improvisation
Plus, Perennial are your new favorite live band.
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
This week got off to an ugly start, so it’s worth remembering that music — making it, and supporting it — is an expression of community, and therefore a way to resist the darkness and twisted nihilism that loom. In the face of concerted efforts to keep people divided and afraid, embracing art that brings us together is a radical act. So act radically.
Speaking of, this week’s Freak Scene has the goods on New Haven’s F.I.M. Records, a new label bolstering “radical music of the northeast.” Also, I try to do justice to the spectacular Perennial concert I saw last week in Amherst.
Although New York City is generally considered the focal point of free improvisation music, Connecticut has a thriving scene steeped in what the co-founder of F.I.M. Records calls “radical music of the northeast.”
It is, to be sure, an underground kind of scene, in the sense that it gets very little mainstream attention. Guitarist Luke Rovinsky and bassist Caleb Duval in 2022 started an improvised music series called F.I.M., which has presented around 80 concerts featuring 200 musicians, often at Never Ending Books in New Haven. Last year, Rovinsky and Duval expanded F.I.M. (the initials don’t stand for anything) into a record label to document those performances.
Musically, free improvisation descends from avant-garde music and free jazz. There are no rules or set structures; musicians improvise sounds, melodies and rhythms in the moment, in response to each other.
“In improvised music, it is standard practice to perform in ad-hoc groups,” Rovinsky says by email. “The same people will play together in all sorts of different combinations as they see fit — duos, trios, quartets, quintets, etc. Often people that have never previously met will perform together having hardly ever spoken.”
F.I.M. Records has a pair of new releases this month. The first, Andrea & Bookers, features Rovinsky, Duval and drummer Michael Larocca (who runs another free improvisation series in Willimantic) as Bookers. They’re playing with Andrea Pensado, an acclaimed experimental musician from Salem, Mass., by way of Argentina, who makes music using her voice and electronics. The other album, Trismós, features Bookers collaborating with Peruvian bassist Teté Leguía.
“There are a variety of different approaches and methodologies at play in the music we present,” Rovinsky says, “but Bookers encompasses a lot of what could be characterized as the ‘F.I.M. sound’ — rapid introduction and disposal of ideas, fluctuating modes of interaction, rug-pulling, extreme juxtaposition, dramatic volume shifts, very short schemes against very long schemes, and so on.”
Both albums are the result of a three-day residency late last fall at Never Ending Books — in fact, they came from two different performances on the same day, Dec. 1. Though they have points in common, each album is distinct, executed without forethought.
“We just set up the gear and started playing with no plans,” Pensado says by email.
Many of the tracks on Andrea & Bookers have a staccato feel on soundscapes that are continually shifting: glitchy electronics stutter through bursts of guitar feedback, samples and ambient noise. Pensado chops up her vocals so that they often sound like she’s scrolling quickly through a radio dial, while Larocca parts encompass clattering cymbals, rockslide barrages and the fluttering of fast-beating wings on the toms.
With Leguía and Duval each playing bass, Trismós sometimes has a more fluid sound, though there’s also scraping guitar-string noise, clip-clop woodblock percussion and, on “Bud,” a push-pull sensation as bass parts collide, meld and pull apart.
There’s nothing about either release, or free improvisation in general, that makes for easy listening, but that’s part of the point. Rovinsky and Duval are interested in collaborating with musicians, like Pensado and other free music luminaries like Joe Morris, Stephen Gauci, Sam Newsome and Toshi Makihara, who want to challenge themselves as much as their listeners, and embrace the DIY ethic that underpins free improvisation, and innovative art in general.
“More than any particular sound, those principles guide what we try to do with F.I.M.,” Rovinsky says. “And those people all provide us with examples to look to both musically and as far as how to conduct oneself as an artist in a world largely indifferent to or antagonistic toward non-commercial music.”
F.I.M. has some package deals at the moment: pre-order Caleb Duval 21 on CD and get a download of Andrea & Bookers for free. Or pre-order a CD of Leguía’s forthcoming release Into a Greater Nothing and get a download of Trismós for free.
Perennial Are Explosive at the Drake
Though Freak Scene doesn’t tend to include concert reviews, Perennial deserve an exception.
I’ve gone to a lot of shows over the years, and Perennial’s performance last Friday, Jan. 17, at the Drake in Amherst, ranks among the best I’ve ever seen. The Connecticut/Massachusetts modernist-punk trio was explosive, delivering maybe 35 minutes of sonic mayhem onstage with full-throttle intensity. Their energy was unflagging, and the volume was immersive: when the band launched into their first song, it was like they had kicked open the door of a blast furnace — from the inside.
Singer/guitarist Chad Jewett and singer/keyboardist Chelsey Hahn never stopped moving: while he was spraying rapid-fire barrages of angular guitar lines around the room, she was off dancing by drummer Wil Mulhern (who left the band last year, but was back filling for this show). When Hahn was adding textures on her compact keyboard, Jewett was in mid leap near his guitar rig, or over next to Hahn playing his guitar over his head. At one point, Jewett cut open a finger on the strings of his guitar, resulting in a red smear of blood on the white plastic pickguard of his black Rickenbacker guitar. He was unfazed.
The band focused on its most recent album, last year’s excellent Art History (read more about it in Freak Scene #18). Hahn and Jewett locked in on “Up-tight,” her keyboards pushing against his guitar parts. In the middle, the song receded to just a bassline (on guitar) and a murmured refrain before surging back to full force. Hahn and Jewett shouted unison vocals on “Mouthful of Bees,” his spring-coiled guitar parts ricocheting across the stage, and they swapped lines on “Action Painting,” where her bursts of organ blended with his guitar in a way that seemed to exert its own gravitational pull.
Perennial were at the top of a bill that also included the first-ever show by Truther, a spin-off of the now-defunct New Haven band Minus Points, and the Western Mass. foursome Radical Joy. Both bands were very good. Yet when Perennial came onstage and Jewett hit that first massive guitar chord, it was like the world changed in an instant from black-and-white into vivid, saturated color.
On Bluesky afterward, Perennial wrote a post that read, in part, “At the end of the day we want to be your favorite live band.” With performances like the one at the Drake, that title is theirs for the taking.
This Weekend
Tonight, Friday, Jan. 24, Les Dérailleurs perform with Ex-Temper at the Rendezvouz in Turners Falls. There’s a suggested $10 donation at the door.
Upcoming Concerts
The Back Porch Festival has expanded the lineup to include Robbie Fulks, Billy Keane, Chchunk, Kimaya Diggs and Signature Dish; the festival happens March 7-9 in Northampton (details).
Pigeons Playing Ping Pong and the Infamous Stringdusters perform with Melt June 2 outdoors at Tree House Brewing in South Deerfield (tickets). Jeffrey Foucault is in the theater there April 24 (tickets).
Enter the Haggis have added a second show March 10 at the Iron Horse in Northampton (tickets). Jobi Riccio is there March 18 (tickets). The Taxidermists, the Hadley duo of Cooper B. Handy and Salvadore McNamara, are there March 21 (tickets). The Lil Smokies perform April 16 (tickets). Matt Anderson is there May 8 (tickets). John Moreland, who last year released the excellent album Visitor, performs May 11 (tickets).
Moreland is also at the Space Ballroom in Hamden May 9 (tickets). Mallrat is there May 10 (tickets).
Splendid Torch and the Clements Brothers play the Parlor Room in Northampton Feb. 5 (tickets). Emily Scott Robinson is there March 12 (tickets). Guitar-vocal duo Goodnight Moonshine, featuring Molly Venter from Red Molly, play April 13 (tickets). Maya de Vitry is there April 24 (tickets). Missy Raines & Allegheny perform May 2 (tickets). Martin and Eliza Carthy are there May 4 (tickets). Buffalo Rose play
Jesse Roper plays March 7 at the Drake in Amherst (tickets). Everthing Yes are there April 12 (tickets). Palmyra perform May 8 (tickets).
Fresh off the release of her first solo album, Kim Deal performs March 6 at District Music Hall in Norwalk (tickets).
Jim Messina plays March 8 at the Warehouse at FTC in Fairfield (tickets). Fantastic Cat perform May 10 at StageOne at FTC (tickets), and anyone who saw them at the Iron Horse in December knows they bring it live.
In case the rockabilly levels in your bloodstream are running low, Sasquatch & the Sick-A-Billys play a convenient afternoon show Feb 2 at Cafe Nine in New Haven (tickets).
Freak Scene is always seeking submissions. You can send music for coverage consideration to erdanton at gmail or reply to this email. Check out these guidelines first.
Thank you for reading, and for sharing this newsletter. Previous issues of Freak Scene are available in the archive.