ICE: Party Pack

Consisting of Adam Hopkins/b, Dustin Carlson/g, Nathan Ellman-Bell/dr and the two tenor team of Patrick Breiner & Eric Trudel,  the band ICE specializes in free form material supplied by Hopkins’ pen. The band is recorded in concert at the iBeam in Brooklyn, 2016, with seven wild and whooley originals. The show is bookended by two short pieces, “39.6432N” and “76.7408W” which are reed workouts for effects and mouthpieces.  Other tunes such as “ Duckpin” come off like a tenor sax traffic jam, while chirps and thundering rock drumming takes place on “Little Mathletes” while Hopkins gets salient with jarring reeds on the brisk paced “The Stephanies.” A mix of mayhem and cacophony dominate this album that is reminiscent of Naples’ Via Nazionale with a street full of honking horns.

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