Emergency Group’s At Westbeth is the new plasma burst from the brainstem of jazz-rock’s mutant cousin. Recorded live at NYC’s Far West Studio inside Westbeth Artist Housing, this four-track set finds the Brooklyn quartet doing what it does best, summoning the cosmic with no roadmap or apologies.
Like most of Emergency Group’s work, At Westbeth doesn’t necessarily feature songs as much as organized seizures. The group’s dedication to improvisation makes their live output nearly indistinguishable in quality from their studio releases, because the studio is just another room to blow up in.
Compared to the sci-fi jitters of Crisis in Mono or the clattering hypnosis of Inspection of Cruelty, At Westbeth is looser, louder, and more gleefully unstable. Andreas Brade’s drums are pure demolition, and Jonathan Byerley wrings starbursts from his fretboard like he’s trying to peel the paint off Mars. Robert Boston’s keys flicker between planetary radar and haunted calliope, and bassist Dave Mandl glues it all together with lines that slither and snap.
You might hear early Santana, maybe a little Bitches Brew, or even the Grateful Dead if they’d been raised by wolves and taught quantum physics. But really, Emergency Group sounds like themselves: a band for people who want their jazz loud, their rock weird, and their psych not just spaced-out but spaced through.
Whatever you do, don’t call them a jam band. This is not your uncle’s noodle-fest. This is organized combustion. At Westbeth is controlled chaos wrapped in feedback, proof that the avant-garde still has a pulse, and it’s beating way too fast.
Leave a Reply