Madam Orange – Parallax
MADAM ORANGE is the entity uniting Chicago-based avant musicians/solo artists Emily Rach Beisel (bass clarinet, electronics) and Bill Harris (drums, electronics), unveil their eccentric debut album, Parallax, through Amalgam.
Both formidable solo artists, Beisel and Harris combine their respective sonic worlds into MADAM ORANGE, a project that often sounds like far more than two people playing, pushing toward the outer limits of heavy improvisation, rhythmic interlock, amplification, and feedback. Their music moves fluidly between dense, aggressive intensity and spacious, highly sensitive textures, driven by a near-telepathic musical connection and a shared interest in extending acoustic instruments through electronics. Having toured throughout the Midwest, East Coast, and Canada, including Midwest tours in 2024 and East Coast and Canadian tours in 2023, the duo is now on the verge of delivering their recorded debut, Parallax.
Through eleven unhinged but focused movements combining free-range and non-compliant techniques, MADAM ORANGE’s Parallax is the candid rock purist’s worst nightmare yet offers the adventurous spelunkers of the musical world’s most exterior realms a vast expanse of uncharted chasms and corridors in which to venture, and perhaps not return. Theatrical and ethereal woodwind tactics delivered via subtly employed electronic manipulations and vast outboard effects, lightly-grinding/unconventional percussive and rhythmic flow, and an overall sense of auditor boundary-testing coalesce and writhe like an alien ecosystem living in the cracks of reality.
Recorded by Bill Harris, who also operates the Amalgam label. Emily Rach Beisel and Bill Harris created the album’s cover art and mixed the audio which was then mastered by Edward Hamel. MADAME ORANGE’s output should capture your attention if Nurse With Wound, Zu, Alice Coltrane, Boredoms, John Zorn, Secret Chiefs Three, Ruins, Peter Brötzmann, Muslimgauze, Skullflower, and Ornette Coleman permeate your listening habits.
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