Search - William Hooker :: Shamballa

Free jazz dada nihilism

SDK | 03/17/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is what free jazz was meant to be. A mind numbing explosion of mathematical chaos enclosed by the spirit drumming of Mr. William Hooker. This album can grow its own organic fruit, it has its own planetoid orbiting the universe in which manifests on listening. I cycle downtown with my headphones on, smelling the sweet night air, Hooker in my ear, Thurston on my tongue and Sharp in the gun. Thurston Moore is the devil. He can bleed a guitar dry and then some. His creative guitar noise compliments Hooker like a bread machine toasts a bagel. It all ends up blending in, like watercolors on sandpaper to form the heavenly spectrum that is **Shamballa**. Elliot Sharp can grow trees like a fractal when he pluck lucks away at his guitar/bass. He is the equation we seek to find the answer to the questions we are afraid to ask. Like a science experiment gone wrong, this free jazz movement dwells upon mutation after mutation, like karma, no like a new disease. An ice cream sundae type disease, the kind you skip school for. Yeah."

Raw guitar work from Thurston

SDK | 12/11/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I loved this CD from the opening moment. It was one of the first I bought from the SY sideman and William Hooker (who I had seen in Seattle that night with Lee Ranaldo). Moore is his usual brilliant self, resonating perfectly with Hooker's textures, never out of sync. The Smith piece is less interesting."