Description
Cellist Peggy Lee and guitarist Cole Schmidt are quite simply two of the most important composer-improvisers to have emerged from Vancouver's vibrant creative music community. Both wield vast vocabularies on their respective instruments, and with them they can coax out a seemingly endless array of sonic colours within just as many stylistic frameworks. They're also united by their shared gift for a particular sort of melodicism - one that can sneak its way into multiple idioms and expressions
This potent combination of attributes has been over the past decade in groups such as Echo Painting and SICK BOSS. The pair serve as the album's gracious co-hosts, sharing compositional duties, the auditory limelight and seemingly divvying up the allotment of guests. Each brings several close collaborators to the sizeable cast of friends: international luminaries such as Wayne Horvitz, Frank Rosaly, Erika Angell, Meredith Bates,Sara Schoenbeck, and Dylan van der Schyff, all make appearances, plus fellow members of SICK BOSS like JP Carter and James Meger.
Captured in vivid detailby Seb Fournier at Hotel2Tango in Montreal, John Raham at Afterlife Studios in Vancouver, as well as remotely from homes & spaces in Gothenburg, Melbourne, Amsterdam and New York City in 2022 & 2023, Forever Stories of: Moving Parties is an invitation to celebrate two of Canada's most ingenious and multifaceted performer-composers amongst some of their brightest peers.
Praise for Peggy Lee and Cole Schmidt:
"She can scrape and stridulate as required, but her cello playing also grants due place to clarity of line and sweetness of tone." - Julian Cowley, The Wire
"Lee is soft-spoken and incredibly modest, but she is arguably the most prominent improvising musician in the rich musical community around Vancouver... Her success beyond the local scene may be due to her unique sound. Though she plays with a lyrical richness, she does not reuse the overtrod blues licks or standard bebop vocabulary that is the lingua franca or so many jazz players." - Will Layman, PopMatters
"Despite their classical proclivities, the group exhibits a looseness. This is in part due to Schmidt's gritty guitar work as well as the others' tendencies to stretch and play around the edges. Sick Boss represents the current wave of North American avant-rock. Influenced by decades-ago innovators from across the pond (i.e., Henry Cow), this outfit still manages to sound uniquely strange and compelling. As such, Businessless comes highly recommended." - Mike Borella, Avant Music News
"Cole Schmidt is looking forward to presenting new tunes such as the searing opening track "Useless Genius 1." At a time when so-called "fusion jazz" is making a comeback, Sick Boss emerges as an exceptional outlier making driving, edgy and often elegant instrumental work."- Stuart Derdeyn, Vancouver Sun