NHIC Records is gifting us a fantastic new album, CENTURY, the latest from The Light Upon Blight Ensemble. A shape-shifting monolith of sound, the album is stitched together from a century of musical influences—jazz, prog, post-rock, free improv, blues, classical, and pop—simmering in a cauldron of collective spontaneity.
The brainchild of composer-guitarists Jeff Cedrone and Bob Gorry, CENTURY is an unfolding, interdimensional conversation in which melody and madness waltz, dissolve, and reassemble.
From the meditative murmur of “Unity” to the thunderous, polyrhythmic incantations of “Pearl” and the unison eruptions closing “The Other,” CENTURY refuses to settle. It is an amorphous beast, shifting with each listen, a musical ouroboros devouring and reinventing itself in real-time.
The interplay between musicians—guitars bending and colliding, dual drummers Tom Hogan and Peter Riccio detonating rhythms, Richard Brown’s saxophone leaping between chaos and catharsis, Pete Brunelli’s bass grounding the madness—turns each track into a living organism, pulsating with raw, kinetic energy.
Brown channels the spirits of Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, and Maceo Parker, his saxophone darting between beauty and brutality. Cedrone and Gorry’s guitars fuse and fracture, spiraling through dimensions.
The drummers duel and dance while Brunelli’s bass navigates the shifting terrain with cryptic authority. Each track unfolds like an avant-garde hallucination akin to Third Eye favorites Vague Plot: the post-rock expanse of “Night Windows,” the volcanic intensity of “Pearl,” the bluesy, unexpected left turns of “Beyond,” and the grand, calculated exhalation of “The Other.”
Captured live in a single performance at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, CENTURY is a moment in time suspended, a raw, unrepeatable act of collective creation.
The Light Upon Blight Ensemble is a gravitational force in New Haven’s experimental music scene. As core members of the New Haven Improvisers Collective (NHIC), they have spent decades summoning sound in every form—jazz, punk, avant-garde compositions, and sonic explorations beyond genre.
Their collective resume spans collaborations with legends from Napoleon Murphy Brock (Frank Zappa) to Joe Morris, Butch Morris, and underground wizard Stan Nishimura.
NHIC itself is an evolving entity, now two decades deep into cultivating the weird, the wild, and the wondrous. With over 50 members, it’s a hive of musical minds, hosting free monthly workshops and performances and fostering a culture where spontaneity reigns supreme.
NHIC Records, the Collective’s archival arm, has captured this magic since 2008. CENTURY marks its 19th release, with more sonic experiments on the horizon, including the debut of The Roundhouse Quartet in 2025.
CENTURY is an invitation to step inside a living, breathing musical organism that dissolves boundaries and reshapes itself with every note. The Light Upon Blight Ensemble has crafted something elemental and untamed that refuses to be forgotten.
Tune in and let it scramble your brains. The release is set for February 27th.
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