Ama Divers - Shadow Seeking Sun (2017) [Hi-Res]

Have you ever witnessed a band perform a familiar song as if they were reciting the alphabet? Like they could be miming to their own record and no one in the audience would know the difference? Drag, right? Well, don’t judge such musicians too harshly: transforming a rigidly fixed composition into the kind of a spontaneous creative act we expect from the most intrepid jazz and improv groups is perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing any performing band. This is because doing so takes ability, imagination, and nerve; the path from the fixity of song to on-the-spot musical invention is perilous and, as a result, rarely traversed.

Ama Divers is a trio from North Carolina who uses this very path as the foundation on which it builds its stirring, hypnotic music. Composed atop a chassis of field recordings and rendered with all the fussiness of a gasoline-drenched Lee Perry throwing the I Ching, the lush, moody Shadow Seeking Sun, the band’s first official full-length album, brims with nuance, power, and heart.

The group--Brian Haran (organ, synth, sampler, guitar, live dub treatments, recording, mixing), Chris Girard (guitars) and Renee Mendoza Haran (field recordings, bass, clarinet, voice)—has been kicking around for a few years, performing sporadically... more