New Ghosts and BOP STOP present: A historic double bill: Ballister: Dave Rempis, saxophone; PNL, drums; Fred Lonberg-Holm, anti-cello AND Ken Vandermark, reeds; Paul Lytton, drums; Nate Wooley, trumpet. $25 for two sets. 6pm sharp. We could not be more delighted by this double bill. This show will be livestreamed on BOP STOP's Facebook page at showtime. Accessing the stream is free but donations are encouraged and can be made at www.givebutter.com/ballister

ABOUT THE BANDS
Ballister is a transatlantic powerhouse. This free-wheeling trio first came together at a closed session in 2009, and as any fan of improvised music can imagine, the band hit hard from the first note and hasn’t looked back since. The unabashed energy of Rempis and PNL, coupled with the electrified cello antics of Lonberg-Holm, make for a powerful listening experience that combines driving grooves with noisy textures and occasional melodic interjections. These sliding and overlapping rhythms often give the music a feeling as if a rug is slowly being pulled out from underneath the listener while the music still maintains a strong forward momentum. Reference points include the Julius Hemphill groups of the 70's and 80's featuring Abdul Wadud, Ornette Coleman's Prime Time, and the early-70's explorations of Miles Davis' electric bands.

The band currently has nine releases under its belt, including Bastard String (self-released, 2010) Mechanisms (Clean Feed Records, 2012) Mi Casa es en Fuego (self-released, 2013), Both Ends (Bocian Records, 2014), Worse For The Wear (Aerophonic Records, 2015), The Ballister Monologues (Astral Spirits, 2015), Slag (Aerophonic Records, 2017), Low Level Stink (Dropa Disc, 2017), and Znachki Stilyag (Aerophonic Records, 2020). They’ve also toured both North America and Europe extensively in that time.

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In April of 2022, Paul Lytton (drums), Ken Vandermark (reeds), and Nate Wooley (trumpet), three key figures of the international experimental music scene, will come together for a unique series of concerts in the United States. Vandermark and Wooley have been working as a duo for the last seven years, touring in both the States and in Europe, and have released three critically acclaimed albums together. Both have performed and recorded with Pytton many times, and the three of them issued an album of trio material as part of the double CD, The Nows,in 2012. The trio’s upcoming tour will be an extremely rare chance to hear Paul Lytton perform in the U.S. His history connected to improvised music is legendary, and this collaboration with Vandermark and Wooley, two of the most significant cutting-edge musicians of their generations, is sure to be exceptional and one of a kind.

Paul Lytton, a central figure in the British free improvisation movement of the 1960s and 70s which included Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and Paul Rutherford, was instrumental in reshaping the way drums and percussion were viewed in free music. He is one of a handful of percussionists from that time whose work allowed the drum kit to become even more free from the timekeeping constraints of jazz up to that point; the instrument becoming less a set of drums and more a series of membranes on which to create an atmosphere. His earliest experiments in homemade instruments and electronics with Evan Parker have spurred generations on to look outside systems with names such as "jazz" and "improv" and to explore new modes of communication in the moment.

Ken Vandermark has been a fixture on the Chicago music scene since the 1990s, and has earned wide critical praise for his playing and his multilayered compositions, which typically balance intricate orchestration with passionate improvisation. He has led or been a member of many groups, has collaborated with a large number of acclaimed musicians from around the world, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999, works as a co-curator of the Option Series at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, and directs the musician cooperative, Catalytic Sound. He plays tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and baritone saxophone.

Nate Wooley’s solo playing has often been cited as being a part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet, and has gathered international acclaim. Time Out New York has called him “an iconoclastic trumpeter”, and Dave Douglas has said, “Nate Wooley is one of the most interesting and unusual trumpet players living today, and that is without hyperbole”. His collaborative work as a composer has been celebrated by critics and has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.