Phillip Johnston

Flood At The Ant Farm is the second Black Saint album by Phillip Johnston's Big Trouble, the band the saxophonist and composer led after the Microscopic Septet. Johnston started it around 1991 and, in his own account, it played originals and covers he arranged together with music by its members. The group made three CDs, two for Black Saint and one for Avant, and also performed his score for Tod Browning's silent film The Unknown. The first Black Saint disc carried the band's name as its title. This second one has twelve short, tightly arranged pieces, most of them between three and nine minutes, ending on the one-minute Hairline. The cover paintings, Play and Cleeking the Devil, both from 1994, are by Nora Sturges.

It was recorded on July 25 and 26 and August 2, 1995 at Tedesco Studios in New Jersey and mixed there in September, produced by Johnston and Andy Caploe, engineered by Jon Rosenberg, with liner notes by Francis Davis. Johnston plays soprano and alto, Bob DeBellis soprano, tenor, baritone and bass clarinet, and Steve Swell trombone, with trumpet in the front line. Joe Ruddick is on piano, keyboards and sampler, Dave Hofstra on bass and Kevin Norton on drums, vibraphone and marimba. Johnston opens with Steve Lacy's Hemline and writes most of the rest, from Willie's Room and Mr. Crocodile to Pontius Pilate Polka. Ruddick contributes Advertisement For A Dream and Heaven, Hell, Or Hoboken, Norton The Enduring Heart and DeBellis Don't Fret, Sweat.

This is the Black Saint CD 120182-2, the album's original release, dated 1996 on the disc.