Everything about “Catching an L” is oversaturated. From the overexposed colors that bleed in and out of the dizzying video to the meandering horn that blares over a whirlwind drum performance, the first song off Greg Fox’s upcoming full-length The Gradual Progression projects a sonic and visual landscape as engaging as it is overwhelming. The result is, quite literally, a trip: the video depicts a 4-wheeler excursion across a rocky apline landscape, and the track doesn’t sound much different. Synths jab, cymbals shriek, and unidentifiable sounds shiver in and out of the frame as a loungy horn skronk seems to conduct the assemblage.
It’s an enthralling, overstimulating peek into Greg Fox’s world, an ever-expanding cosmos soon to be slipping into free jazz and black metal on the upcoming Ex Eye album, a collaboration with saxophonist Colin Stetson. With its honk and propulsion, “Catching an L” forecasts both the freewheeling experimentation of Greg Fox’s solo work and the abstract heaviness of Ex Eye. It’s a colorful and hallucinatory transmission from one of experimental music’s foremost technicians.
Catch Greg Fox play with Ex Eye at Saint Vitus August 8 for one of the jazzy metal four-piece’s first shows ever, and be sure to prepare by listening to the groups self-titled debut, out now on Relapse.