The venerable Chicago based imprint, Drag City, is having a pretty fantastic moment. Only a short while back, we wrote up their release of Jim O’Rourke’s absolutely astounding LP “Hands That Bind”, and they’ve just dropped a killer LP of archival John Fahey works (watch this space). Now they’re back with “Resolve”, another towering gesture of experimentalism that extends their long-standing dedication to the composer Arnold Dreyblatt. A brand-new recording, encountering Dreyblatt working with his new all-star orchestra of Oren Ambarchi, Konrad Sprenger, and Joachim Schütz, across its driving two sides we encounter the veteran artist weaving a shimmer line between post-punk and minimalism that culminates as one of the most intoxicating records we’ve encountered from him in years.

First emerging in downtown New York City during the 1970s alongside friends and peers like Arthur Russell, Ellen Fullman, Julius Eastman, Peter Zummo, Elodie Lauten, Maggi Payne, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, and numerous others, Arnold Dreyblatt is one of the central architects of the second wave of Minimalism, helping to radically rethink the idiom in unexpected and challenging ways. A student of Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, and Alvin Lucier, and a close friend and collaborator of Ellen Fullman, the bassist and composer would go on to become a definitive voice among the early 1980’s New York avant-garde, releasing two seminal albums - 1982’s “Nodal Excitation”, reissued in 2015 by Drag City, and 1986’s “Propellers in Love”, reissued in 2017 by Superior Viaduct - that rest at the axis of important change within the canon of American post-minimal music.

First emerging in downtown New York City during the 1970s alongside friends and peers like Arthur Russell, Ellen Fullman, Julius Eastman, Peter Zummo, Elodie Lauten, Maggi Payne, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, and numerous others, Arnold Dreyblatt is one of the central architects of the second wave of Minimalism, helping to radically rethink the idiom in unexpected and challenging ways. A student of Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, and Alvin Lucier, and a close friend and collaborator of Ellen Fullman, the bassist and composer would go on to become a definitive voice among the early 1980’s New York avant-garde, releasing two seminal albums - 1982’s “Nodal Excitation”, reissued in 2015 by Drag City, and 1986’s “Propellers in Love”, reissued in 2017 by Superior Viaduct - that rest at the axis of important change within the canon of American post-minimal music.

Enlisting the all-star line up of Oren Ambarchi, Konrad Sprenger, and Joachim Schütz - each a remarkable and noteworthy artist in their own rights - “Resolve” offers an incredible glimpse of the latest formation of Dreyblatt’s long celebrated orchestra. Comprising four new compositions - “Container”, “Shuffle Effect”, “Flight Path”, and “Auditoria” - the album can be understood as drawing a line back across the composer’s long history and opening a dialogue with the early minimalist inspirations of the first Orchestra of Excited Strings release, 1982’s “Nodal Excitation”, and effectively looking beneath the hood of several decades of progression to review and renew the revolutionary intent of the project’s foundation credo toward a new microtonal music.

While the connections to Dreyblatt’s early gestures are unmistakable, so too are those to the context that was swirling around them in New York during the 1980s, notably the no-wave of early Sonic Youth, and affiliated works like “Die Donnergötter” and “The Ascension” by Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca respectively. Where much of Dreyblatt’s output has allowed bouncing strings to produce the percussive elements, across the length of “Resolve” they are doubled by repetitive bass lines and drums, producing something simultaneously hypnotic and rock aligned. The outcome is nothing short of intoxicating and completely staggering; a startling rethinking of no-wave with the elegance, refinement, and concision of a master composer.

Truly remarkable, with Ambarchi, Sprenger, and Schütz at his back, Arnold Dreyblatt’s “Resolve” is one of the most exciting records we’ve heard all year, breathing fire and life into the present of this already incredible composer’s legacy. It’s nearly impossible to get off the turntable once the needle drops, commanding return after return. We can’t thank Drag City enough for bringing it into the world. Ten out of ten and as essential as they come!