On March 14, Nels Cline will be releasing, Consentrik Quartet, which is the eponymous debut of the guitarist’s band, which features saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Tom Rainey. The album spotlights the ensemble’s profound chemistry as well as Cline’s versatility as both a player and a writer.
Cline mentioned that he wrote half of the material during lockdown, first in Brooklyn and then in rural upstate New York, where he and his wife relocated. “Suddenly,” Cline recalls, “we were enveloped in silence.” The respite afforded Cline the bandwidth to immerse himself in writing and to think in a diligent way about what the Consentrik aesthetic could be.
“Initially, for myself anyway, my sonic palette, I was looking at a more conservative approach, which is a little more traditional, I guess you’d say.” But Cline’s imagination is too fertile to be hemmed in by artistic parameters even if he sets them himself. “Over time, I found myself looping and writing funkier grooving tunes,” Cline says.
Along with the album announcement, Cline has shared the album’s lead single “The 23,” which is hard-driving piece with a hypnotic groove that bleeds creativity because of how Cline and his band blaze the atmosphere with an elegant harmonic and jazzy vibe.
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