Asheville,NC - Thirty-three years of collaboration and sixteen releasesculminates in the masterpiece Flock, Random Touch'sfinal album. The ten tracks range from the bigger-than-life"Arena" to the uninhibited joy of "Dance of the Elementals"to the psychedelic final track, "She Wore Sheepskin". In-between is found allmanner of genre bending complexity and unnerving cinematic suspense.
ScottHamill's mastery of the bass guitar is notable on the album. Itspervasiveness recreates the traditional jazz trio, and yet jazz couldbe said to take a back seat to both 20th century classical and rockon this album. Much of the drum play is on an Ayotte set versus theDW kit that served for the previous releases, and the album alsocontains an unprecedented live track (# 6). The result of thesechanges is a freshness and newness that belies the band's longhistory and propels the album to new heights.
"Poly-sound,across rhythm, melody and harmony, casts this music into a spacebetween the atoms, tracing tangential connections that align to asound residing deep down and out of sight." – Christopher Brown,drums
Singularas the music of Random Touch is, there is little they do that has notbeen done within the 20th century classical"tradition" or the rock and jazz idioms. It is simply theirwillingness to take risks and their unique embracing of theunconscious and serendipity that sets them apart from most of theircontemporaries.
"Fromscreaming crowds to whispers. We've come together to define ourwall of sound." – James Day, keyboards
