Peregrinations, my new solo cassette, will be officially "out" tonight at midnight (GMT-8), to coincide with #BandcampFriday.
I'm excited to finally bring this music to the world. This was planned as a quick release around the time of my birthday in February. Turns out I don't move that quickly, and neither does the rest of the world. But the tapes should be back from duplication this week, and I will be printing the artwork tomorrow on the #Risograph. Exciting! Meanwhile, the digital album will be available immediately. Enjoy!
I guess I never put up a proper description of the new album, so here goes:
Peregrinations continues saxophonist Wilson Shook’s focus on resonant site-specific improvisations, a practice which converges with his interest in urban exploration and the geography of forgotten places.
The sessions which, presented in their entirety, make up Peregrinations, took place in a semi-abandoned Oakland warehouse, converted into a kickboxing gym before ultimately shuttering in the early days of COVID-19. Vacant space is all too common in the midst of the Bay Area’s sky-high rents, crashing economy, and critical levels of housing insecurity. Shook inhabits this tenuous landscape with sensitivity and strident imagination.
Peregrinations picks up where 2015’s Straying Echoes left off: intimate, expansive, vulnerable flights of wounded virtuosity. Halting attempts at a new language for soprano saxophone. Recorded alone, in the dark, amid the nascent ruins of the American metropolis.