Microplastique

*2025 stock* Performing the compositions of band leader Adam Shead, Microplastique creates music that is both absurd in its aesthetic and serious in its execution. "blare blow bloom!" consists of 10 tracks recorded live in stereo during the ensemble’s July 2024 tour throughout the United States. Throughout the tour, the ensemble performed 10 compositions at each concert, each with vastly different approaches and outcomes. Utilizing their keen improvisational abilities and shared language to morph, reinterpret, and reinvent the composed material each night. The album features selections from five different concerts in Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Lafayette, and Indianapolis, showcasing the bombastic, energized, yet always attentive microplastique sound. 

Blare starts the album off strong as microplastique pulls every ounce of energy, volume, and vigor out of their arsenal of tiny instruments, resulting in a cathartic and enthusiastic “Woah!” from the audience. The second track, blow, begins with a percussion solo existing between the worlds of Roscoe Mitchell’s small percussion work and Tony Oxley’s fiercely dense textural playing. By the fourth track microplastique brings the energy down to create a sparse sonic landscape of balladic beauty resulting in lush improvised harmonies from the flute, melodica, and harmonica. On the ninth track of the album the ensemble takes a complete diversion into full-on minimalism, drawing clear inspiration from the percussion ensemble music of Steve Reich. To finish the album the ensemble performs what seems to be a Threadgill-inspired composition, moving from a plodding march to an all-out up-tempo swing feel with Zucker and Jones’ horns rhapsodically weaving in and out of each other. What microplastique has accomplished on blare blow bloom! is a wonderfully arrayed sound world that is as playful as it is somber and as grounded as it is otherworldly.