Search - Jackie-O Motherfucker :: Freedomland

This is a collection of live-recorded improvised material by Portland, Oregon's Jackie-O Motherfucker. Compiled by founding member Tom Greenwood, this music captures the sound of a reconfigured Jackie-O during the late summer of 2006, with vocalist Eva Salens (Inca Ore), Tom Greenwood, Danny Sasaki, and Nick Bindeman. Their first stop was at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, where the group were scheduled for their first appearance supporting the Dirty Three. There they would begin -- unrehearsed in this formation, and in front of a large audience. The plans to perform material from their newest release Flags of the Sacred Harp were scrapped, and the band launched into a free-form set of improvised, trance-inducing, punk-inspired, psychedelic rock, which became the framework of the new music they would develop together over the next few years. Freedomland is the document of this trip through America. The record consists of location recordings, captured live, and mastered in the United Kingdom. The songs were created from the spirit of improvisation, and honed by performing nightly in dive bars, music halls, and art galleries across America. Salens' vocal delivery is raw and honest, the words flow from conversations, to streams-of-sub-conscious conjuring, and prayer. Guitars alternately soar into cloud-scapes, and battle like free-jazz saxophones, propelling the group into new terrain nightly, while the percussion of Danny Sasaki alternates between exploratory and dead-solid motoric. The collection was edited by Tom Greenwood, from dozens of live recordings, and captures a rare moment in the band's long and confusing history. As Greenwood himself describes, this is "truly the music of everyday life -- birthed each night in a new form, from musicians who put great faith in each other, under awesome strain at times, to project modern music, with soul."