THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In the decade or so that hard-working New York quartet Sunwatchers have operated, they have steadily and subtly refined their sound — a brain-blasting mix of jazz, psychedelia, krautrock, punk, noise and Saharan blues — into something avant-leaning enough to appeal to the discerning jazz and experimental music fan, and weird / wooly enough to get the true heads’ toes tapping. Music Is Victory Over Time is the band’s fitth album, finding the long-running lineup of Peter Kerlin (bass guitar), Jim McHugh (guitars), Jason Robira (drums) and Jeff Tobias (alto saxophone and keyboards) in prime form.
The album’s beguiling title stems from a note scrawled in a book about electronic music donated to PITGOOSE Prisoner Books, the grassroots prison literature program run out of The P.I.T. (aka Property Is Theft, McHugh’s anarchist community space, venue, and info shop in Williamsburg). Scrawled as marginalia modifying a paragraph about durational minimalist composition, the concept illuminates music’s material and spiritual power to subdue the sensation of the passage of time, both as an experiential phenomenon and as a creative, communal, and socio-political force. McHugh says: “The notion resonated with our individual and communal experiences of loss, trauma, stasis, and frustration since 2020, our three-year semi-silence as a band relative to our previous characteristic prolificacy, and our progress, projects, and evolution since.”
Album opener World People is a classic Sunwatchers number whose title expresses their anarcho-internationalist ideology (and the atypically multi-culti makeup of their crowds), with an underlying melodic resonance to New Orleans funeral marches à la Albert Ayler — a triumphant call to arms to all peoples. Live fave Too Gary’s gang vocal shout punctuates a motorik rager named for a phrase often uttered by a badass eight-year-old skateboarder McHugh knew with a speech impediment (it means “that’s too scary”). T.A.S.C. (Theme For Anarchist Sports Center) is inspired by Sonny Sharrock’s maligned ’80s output and sounds exactly like a wrathful, mutant version of a prime-time athletic show theme, replete with the requisite “sitcom ending.”
The sun-scorched Foams — a long-form piece intended to depict natural stuff like tides, nightfall, and time slowly passing, ancient, peaceful, and slightly gross all at once — practically jumps out of the speakers, its palpable intensity crackling in your eardrums. The title of Tumulus might reference an ancient burial mound, but the music itself might be the group’s most high-tech song to date, complemented by an arpeggiating sequencer, three different forms of tape delay, and an electric saxophone; ecstatic, fiery and deeply spiritual. There Goes Ol’ Ooze is a smoky creeper that lets Tobias and Kerlin take a walk for a while, with respectful nods to the Stones and Steve Reich. Song For The Gone closes out the album, showcasing a sincerely tender moment for the gang, written and recorded initially at McHugh’s home on Spanish guitar in 2020 (as an expression of love and resolve for dear friends who had recently, tragically died) its cascading, bluesy melody attuning itself to our own collective unconscious grief.
Having the distinct pleasure of being the first band to record in John Dwyer’s new L.A. studio Discount Mirrors (after Dwyer’s own Ohsees, who were literally loading out as the band loaded in), Music Is Victory Over Time boasts a beefed-up sound. The band worked closely with in-house engineer Eric Bauer — facilitator, troubleshooter, sonic obsessive, a legendary freak, and a DIY lifer. McHugh says “JPD would blast in and fuck with the board, interject ideas, tell stories, whip up a frenzy if we needed. We stayed in the adjacent room, lived on tacos and chocolate, overdubbed in sweatpants. All the right moves.” The band also had full access to the studio’s epic armory of gear: amps, axes (it’s Dwyer’s Eddie Harris model electric sax), synths, and a bass guitar once belonging to Klaus Flouride of Dead Kennedys. Crucial for the sounds and the vibe.
Listening to Music Is Victory Over Time, Sunwatcher’s rebellious spirit and unbridled enthusiasm remain fully intact, but the secret sauce is their infectious irreverence in the face of the horrors of this world. Much of our best cultural commentary is Trojan-horsed to the general public via humor and satire, and the band have a knack for lacing the ridiculous with the radical. It’s good to have them back.”
