Michael Dessen
Digibone Forest
Performed and composed by Michael Dessen on trombone, computer, and midi controllers.
Digibone Forest carries the listener through an otherworldly soundscape created by Michael Dessen, a "slide-trombone virtuoso and computer musician of the highest order" (All About Jazz). Moving through a wide range of moods and spaces, the music is at once visceral, ethereal, playfully unpredictable and completely unclassifiable.
Since studying with Yusef Lateef in the 1990s and beginning his recording career as a featured improviser on one of Lateef's albums, Michael Dessen has consistently garnered critical praise for his imaginative work as a composer-bandleader and trombonist, while forging powerful ties with fellow improvisers in a wide array of settings. Extending the trombone with live sampling and processing has long been part of his music, including four acclaimed releases on Clean Feed Records with his electro-acoustic trio. Signal To Noise magazine hails Dessen's "fantastically subtle, imaginative extensions of his trombone’s sound – feathery rufflings, pixelized halos, teasing curlicues and rasps," and Downbeat notes that he “makes the two instruments work as one… Dessen switches between voluptuous lyricism and digitally distorted splatter, and his shifts between those poles never feel forced or arbitrary."
"Digibone" is Dessen’s term for his live trombone and computer performance environment, and he describes this album as "a collection of sonic poems, each with its own character and form, all coming through this encounter of air and machine." The album's flow constantly surprises: Some tracks draw on samples to invoke politics or poetry, while others delve into abstract collages, immersive textures and mesmerizing improvisations. A unique offering for the adventurous listener, Digibone is a world all its own.