Ches Smith’s Clone Row
Ches Smith’s June 2025 release on Otherly Love Records, Clone Row, debuts an adventurous new quartet featuring guitarists Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman, and bassist Nick Dunston. Smith finds endless possibilities in this seemingly limited instrumentation, weaving together varied threads from his divergent earlier projects in ways that sound not quite like any of them.
The four renowned composer-improvisers tangle with Ches Smith’s newest compositions. Two highly individualistic guitarists swirl, echo and double-take, squaring off with a bass and drums team that anchors and unhinges through doubling sounds — drum machines and acoustic drums, low-end analog synth and acoustic bass, digital samples and repeated fragments performed in real time. In a dance of coherence and chaos, the four musicians plunge headlong into the feedback loop of composition and improvisation armed with chemistry created by their mutual appreciation and enduring friendships.
“This definitely ain’t your father’s guitar band,” writes no less an expert on six-string subversion than Marc Ribot, who penned the album’s liner notes. “It’s as if I’m hearing a Jim Hall concert in which one of us did a lot of mushrooms, or… some post-punk post-Dave Brubeck post-trip-hop experiment with classical form.”
Featuring Ches Smith drums/vibes/electronics, Mary Halvorson guitar, Liberty Ellman guitar, Nick Dunston bass/electronics.
