Thurston Moore / Adam Gołębiewski: Disarm

We must give credit to Thurston Moore because back in the day, at the height of his rock-n-roll superstardom, he turned post-punk fans on to improvisers like Sunny Murray, Paul Flaherty, Sun Ra, Mats Gustafsson, and Masami Akita. Nowadays, as he moves further and further away from rock, the opposite is happening. Improvisation fans listening to Moore's music are investigating the legacy of Sonic Youth and the spinoff projects of Lee Ranaldo, Jim O'Rourke, and Kim Gordon.

Moore's solo work and, probably his recent collaborations, have gained a certain credibility with the free improvisation and noise crowd, on recordings like Umut Çağlar's dunia (Astral Spirits/Monofonus Press, 2017), Charles Hayward's Improvisations (Care In The Community Recordings, 2015), The Thing's Live (The Thing Records, 2014), and two stellar outings with Gustafsson, Balázs Pándi, and Merzbow have solidified his bona fides.

This recording from 2014 with Polish drummer/percussionist Adam Gołębiewski reveals another facet of Moore's guitar work. Disarm is the converse of Moore recordings like Sensitive / Lethal (No Fun Productions, 2008) and Full Bleed: Caught on Tape (Northern Spy, 2015). Sure, we still get the rip and thrash Moore is known for, but this duo is less inclined to play room-clearing music. Credit Gołębiewski, an arbiter of sounds. His engaging body of work includes performances with Fred Lonberg-Holm, Sharif Sehnaoui, Ken Vandermark, and Mazen Kerbaj. His solo recording Pool North (Latarnia, 2015) makes him a colorist, much like his American equivalent Tim Daisy. He accents more than brawls with the guitarist, making this a more accessible free improvisation (not an oxymoron) recording.