Ergo at Barbes

Ergo, the tight-knit trio of trombonist Brett Sroka, pianist Bryan Reeder and drummer Shawn Baltazor, continues to hone its patient, subtly enveloping ambient-jazz stylings on a new Cuneiform effort, If Not Inertia. The disc finds the band achieving a rare collectivity, in which no one voice dominates.
- Time Out, New York

www.ergoisaband.com

Ergo is a unique electro-acoustic ensemble, who mine areas of sound unheard in modern jazz. If Not Inertia, their 2012 release on Cuneiform Records, is a set of laconic motifs, guitar effects and minute prepared-piano cresting and colliding in collective improvisations and live-sampling of the entire ensemble....

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Ergo, the tight-knit trio of trombonist Brett Sroka, pianist Bryan Reeder and drummer Shawn Baltazor, continues to hone its patient, subtly enveloping ambient-jazz stylings on a new Cuneiform effort, If Not Inertia. The disc finds the band achieving a rare collectivity, in which no one voice dominates.
- Time Out, New York

www.ergoisaband.com

Ergo is a unique electro-acoustic ensemble, who mine areas of sound unheard in modern jazz. If Not Inertia, their 2012 release on Cuneiform Records, is a set of laconic motifs, guitar effects and minute prepared-piano cresting and colliding in collective improvisations and live-sampling of the entire ensemble.

Trombonist, computer musician Brett Sroka and drummer Shawn Baltazor are hold-overs for this third recording, with the addition of Sam Harris on piano, prepared piano and rhodes, and for the first time guest musicians, both of them guitarists. Acclaimed avant-garde guitarist Mary Halvorson appears on much of the record and Sebastian Krueger of the indie band Inlets plays acoustic guitar on the final track. If Not Inertia is a record that pushes Ergo’s music in new directions, at once organic, intangible and subtly stunning.

"...has a deft touch when it comes to molding silence and drones into rich celestial balladry... a nifty confluence of George Lewis's dreamscapes and Miles's Lonely Fire, and while it's a record that invites you to watch the embers glow, it does its fair share of shooting off sparks." - The Village Voice

"...into completely new horizons similar to nothing you've heard before... captivating, hypnotic, and attractively exotic music" - All Music Guide

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