Known for its virtuosic improvisations and wide-ranging stylistic flexibility, the experimental chamber ensemble 9 Horses has announced the release of its double album Omegah (Adhyâropa Records, TBR 08.06.21). Featuring three of today’s leading instrumentalists, Joe Brent (mandolin), Sara Caswell (violin), and Andrew Ryan (bass), the band’s performance on this album gives listeners the opportunity to experience its organic evolution from its acoustic original duo to its current revered acoustic/electric ensemble.

What began as a remarkable jazz-meets-new acoustic trio has blossomed as the band expanded its lineup, augmented its musical palette, and experimented with a variety of sound worlds including small chamber groups, avant-garde synth ensembles, and symphony orchestras. According to Sara Caswell, Omegah reflects 9 Horses’s natural progression. “This record is the culmination of years of experimenting with band members, musical timbres, colors and styles. In a way, it portrays our group’s entire odyssey.”

Six years in the making, Omegah is 9 Horses’s second full-length album. The first was the all-acoustic Perfectest Herald (Sunnyside Records) released in 2015. The centerpiece of that album was a four-movement suite for the acoustic trio alone. All About Jazz wrote that the music, "is just bursting with emotion and its immediacy is partly what makes it so attractive and inviting. This highly emotive music touches and communicates the essence of what it means to be an alive, feeling human being." The more digitally enhanced follow-up EP Blood From A Stone (Sunnyside Records) was released in 2019.

This third and by far largest album is a continuation of the two previous ones: acoustic and electric textures ever-present, blending seamlessly with one another throughout. It stands as a musical representation of the breadth of the band members’ influences and experiences, from classical to jazz and laced with folk and pop sensibilities, and as always, largely improvised.

The album was substantially recorded during the pandemic in Brent’s home studio and remotely from the home studios of 9 Horses’s collaborators. While the onset of COVID lockdowns initially created a challenge to complete the then-half-finished record, it eventually gave the trio an opportunity to be even more meticulous and expansive in its palette. As Brent noted: “Without the constraint of a prescribed amount of studio time, I got a chance to really tinker with the inner workings of the tunes. Entire sections were ripped out and re-composed, or re-recorded without the pressure of watching a clock. Each piece had time to grow and breathe naturally in our ears and imaginations rather than in the mixing engineer’s DAW. It was a unique opportunity for us, and wound up much more organic in feel than a stitched-together representation of just whatever studio time we had to work with.”

A digital version is also available at: https://hvny.info/marketplace/shop/9horses/omegah-digital

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