https://www.youtube.com/embed/G0wWmoTZ11o

With CHANT, prolific rock/jazz guitarist Todd Clouser reaches back to the days of American Prison song and Field Chant for inspiration.

Part Clouser's signature wild guitar work, part street choir, and part beat story teller, CHANT is a concept record celebrating music's ability to create new community.

In

https://www.youtube.com/embed/G0wWmoTZ11o

With CHANT, prolific rock/jazz guitarist Todd Clouser reaches back to the days of American Prison song and Field Chant for inspiration.

Part Clouser's signature wild guitar work, part street choir, and part beat story teller, CHANT is a concept record celebrating music's ability to create new community.

In recording CHANT, Clouser reached out to friends and strangers in his homes of Minneapolis and Mexico City, from his neighborhood garbage man to members of Mexico City's thriving creative music scene, in creating groups of singers. Recorded in studios in Minneapolis, New York City, the Peruvian Amazon amongst a family of shaman, and the streets of Mexico City, singers were directed in real time to chant over the tracks created by Clouser, Martin, and Bates. The result is a new community recording of 80 musicians and singers spanning up and down the Americas.

On CHANT, language, genre, geography, and tradition collide in avant color with wild results.

Todd Clouser - guitars, rhodes, voice, pianos, electric bass James Buckley - acoustic bass JT Bates - drums Billy Martin - drums and percussion

Recorded at Studio HH, Bathtub Shrine Recording Studio, in homes of friends in MX City and Minneapolis, MN, Pizza Jazz Cafe MX City

1. Dead Men Beneath the Dirty Ground
2. You the Brave
3. Don't Politik Me
4. Hold My Machete
5. Baby Brother
6. Calle Rumania en la Mañana
7. Open the Sky and Let Me In
8. Mis Hijas Postizas
9. Baby America
10. Arms Full of Fires
11. Whiskey Rattle
12. Medicine In the Tree
13. Everything is Brighter Now

All Songs written by Todd Clouser and published by Imagination Demand (BMI) Produced by Todd Clouser

Engineered by Todd Clouser, Hernan Hecht, and many more Mixed by Randall Dunn at Avast Studio in Seattle, WA Mastered by Huntley Miller at HM Mastering in Minneapolis, MN

www.toddclouser.com

Released by Ropeadope Records www.ropeadope.com

On pocket

This record is a celebration music's ability to create community. I began with a short chant and sketch of each song, recorded simply with a harmonium or guitar while out on tour. On a visit to Mexico City, Billy Martin recorded drum and percussion parts over my sketches - reacting without specific directions - in Hernan Hecht's studio. I had always hoped to one day hear Billy Martin and JT Bates, a friend from Minneapolis, play together, so I took the tracks up to Minneapolis and JT recorded on top of Billy at Erik Koskinen's studio. With drum tracks and my Chant sketches, James Buckley played upright bass and songs began to take form and develop clearer tonalities or harmony. I began inviting friends over to my apartment in Mexico City to record chants that I directed in real time, recording simply, with just a room microphone. It was mostly joy, the chant sessions. We would get together, people would often be nervous or skeptical, and by the end we were all signing and shouting and improvising. There were a few of these sessions in Mexico City at my home and places friend hung out, and a little jazz spot called Pizza Jazzz, and one in Minneapolis on a tour stop, where we had ages 7 to mid 70's in Greg Schutte's studio. With almost 60 people recording chants, I began to add guitars, pianos and more colors and the record became what it is, a big community of people and sound that trust, intrigue, and technology allowed to take shape. Music teaches us whats possible and allows us to realize the possibility.

AvantTodd ClouserChantJT BatesBilly Martin