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There has always been a section of the Venn diagram of music where metal, jazz, and experimental music overlap. This is the slice of the pie where many of John Zorn's projects live alongside newer acts like Neptunian Maximalism, long established musical oddballs like Nurse With Wound, the late underground electronic musician Muslimgauze, and boundary-pushing jazz performers like Ornette Coleman. Chances are that after reading those first two sentences, your eyes either completely glazed over in disinterest, or you're excited to see where this is going. If your reaction was in the latter camp, then allow me to introduce you to Madam Orange.
Madam Orange is the new project of Chicago-based musicians Emily Rach Beisel and Bill Harris. Both have worked extensively as solo artists, and Parallax is their first album as a duo. The music on Parallax is often heavy, but those who require their music to have riffs will probably run away screaming. The music on this album consists entirely of bass clarinet, drums, and electronic manipulation of those two instruments (Beisel is also credited as providing vocals but I've listened to this album at least 10 times and couldn't tell you where those vocals appear). The album is also the result of live improvisation and free-ranging explorations of rhythm, feedback, and chaotic pushing of the boundaries of the very forms and shapes of music. To put it simply, Madam Orange are creating experimental free jazz, but that is far too reductive to capture the vibe of this album.
Opening tracks "Rilles" and closing track "Straight Rilles" are built around the same deep-sea horn blasts and chaotic percussion and deliver a vibe that has as worthy a claim to the "doom" tag as most Sabbathian metal. On many tracks, the texture and atmosphere is amplified with electronic manipulations, giving tracks like "Malingerer" an otherworldly, space rock vibe. Other tracks sound closer to the experimental industrial noise of Steven Stapleton's Nurse With Wound. Even at its most chaotic, though, Parallax never sounds unintentional. This is the type of chaotic music that clearly takes expert-level performers to create. Below you can watch Madam Orange performing one of the tracks from the new album live, and in doing so its obvious that while the music may be unconventional, it's never accidental.
Madam Orange is absolutely not going to be for everyone. Parallax is often noisy and abrasive, and without traditional song structures to soften its confrontational elements, it isn't really an album you can simply throw on for background music. But as an active listening experience, it's unpredictable and thrilling. As a non-musician, I'm certain there's much of what Madam Orange are doing on this record that I simply don't understand (I have interview questions out to them in an attempt to learn more), but even so, I've been enthralled with what the duo is doing since the first single dropped a couple months ago. If you're the type of person that's comfortable with music that colors far outside the lines and feels that music doesn't need to feature distorted electric guitars to be considered heavy, then Madam Orange is for you. The songs on Parallax are vital and alive in ways that most conventional music simply cannot match.
Madam Orange's Parallax is out October 23 via Amalgam.