Chris Pitsiokos Unit - Before the Heat Death (2017)

With only 26 years of age, alto saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos is the face of the new generation of musicians who are changing the New York scene. Wild, fierce and raw, his personal playing style is making waves all around, and it’s not a real surprise to find in his Unit some of the most adventurous figures active in the frontier between jazz and rock, namely Brandon Seabrook (Peter Evans, Anthony Braxton, Seabrook Power Plant), Tim Dahl (Child Abuse, Lydia Lunch Retrovirus, Pulverize the Sound) and Weasel Walter (The Flying Luttenbachers, Lydia Lunch Retrovirus, Cellular Chaos). On previous releases, which include musicians like Philip White, Ron Anderson and Kevin Shea, or as a soloist, he’s been committed to the expansion of the possibilities of his instrument, pushing it beyond its limits under the influence of noise music and extreme contemporary composers like Iannis Xenakis and Helmut Lachenmann. For this project he wants something else: to play jazz with all its formal aspects, using the melody-improvisation-melody traditional structure but stuffing it with his experimental aesthetical vision. “Before the Heat Death” is the consequence, equating what we usually recognize as jazz with bizarre and even unique materials. It’s so exciting that you start jumping like crazy in your living room.