Microkingdom

Microkingdom is somehow an oddity in Baltimore’s expansive and already odd music scene. Separately, Marc Miller (guit), Will Redman (perc) and John Dierker (reeds) have each been vital proponents of underground rock, free improv, jazz, and avant garde composition in America’s Comeback City for years. In 2006 they started rehearsing together in a disused room of an auto body shop and playing raucous live shows to an eclectic and enthusiastic audience (Whartscape, Mobtown Modern, the Red Room, etc.).

Microkingdom’s well-received but scarce debut EP Wrenches: My Heart/Double Abacus was recorded quickly in 2007 and released in early 2008. And since November 14, 2007 they have been recording improvisations and graphic scores on Wednesday nights in a basement in Northeast Baltimore. Hours upon hours of recordings were made and then painstakingly shaped into highly detailed compositions.

Microkingdom’s new album Three Compositions Of No Jazz is the result: a palindromic wordless song cycle that melds visionary perspectives of modern art and pop musics. The unbeholdably antagonizing “Peppermint Crab” is reflected in the pseudospectral “Surgery Ghosts”, the subversive breaks in “Aire Metal” are reflected in the harmonic bliss of “The Mytht Of The Rainy Nightt”, and so on. The title of the record is an homage to Anthony Braxton (his debut album is Three Compositions of New Jazz) and to NYC’s No Wave music. Baltimore designer/printmaker Chris Day’s sharp looking black and white artwork burns like an after image of the sounds.

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