Blight Music by Sam Ospovat

Blight Music, my third album as a leader, goes pretty far out but doesn't shy away from the swinging, melodic lineage of the 70's loft scene.

It was recorded in a burned out waterfront warehouse in Bush Terminal where Hubert Selby's Brooklyn still reverberates off the concrete pillars and twenty foot ceilings.

The result veers between exuberant melody, crushing intensity, and a feeling of polyrhythmic suspension executed by some of the fiercest voices on the NYC and Finnish scenes.

Blight Music features a transatlantic ensemble with Matt Mitchell on piano (also contributing the liner notes), Tim Dahl on fretless electric bass, the legendary Finnish ECM guitarist Raoul Björkenheim as well as Olli Hirvonen on electric guitar, Matt Nelson on tenor, and Nick Lyons on alto saxophone.

The group has been my 'working band' for the past several years, performing in New York and Europe since my nearly full-time move to Helsinki in 2022.

Saxophonists Jeremy Viner and Mikko Innanen/Michael Attias took over on woodwinds along with Rieko Okuda on keys for the band's standing room only European shows in Helsinki, Tallinn and Berlin October 30th-Novemebr 1st.

An excerpt from Matt Mitchell’s liner notes offers a good primer on the music:

’’People discuss “intensity” in music as if this quality is self-evident—and often it is. This music is definitely intense, and in many of the obvious ways: volume, density of information, texture. It “goes.” But Sam’s music also has intensity of purpose, a concept that I am pretty sure is inherent to all music that I value —the aforementioned urgent mission. Rigor is definitely present here, especially on the rhythmic front; this is a predilection Sam and I have long shared, one that drew us together in the first place. Paired with this is the need to blast through any preciousness perceived within rigor…Obviously this is where the improvising comes in. One of the draws for me with Sam’s music is the wide berth it grants the musicians amidst the interplay of his novel compositional conceits and the way he exhorts us to spontaneously engage with them via his multidirectional and powerful drumming. Intense, and also intense. On top of all this is the opportunity to do all this with a collection of the most unremittingly bad mofos around. This sort of intensity of purpose can seem rare, even when music is your life and you’re devoted to consuming, contemplating, or creating it. Regardless of the depth and breadth of one’s personal pantheon, there is always a feeling of having found a treasure when hitting upon something that intersects with one’s aesthetic values.

This “goes.”

Thanks.

-Matt Mitchell’’


Note!
Due to the tariff situation the North American distributor for Blight Music (MVD) has moved the U.S. release date to Dec. 12th. Presale will be released then and records will ship very shortly thereafter.

Lorin Benedict's liner notes for the album's first draft:

Sam Ospovat's been on my mind for almost twenty years now. This is partly because we've collaborated for some of that time. But it's now increasingly the case that my interest in him and in his music has moved beyond the rubric of first-person accounts. In short, if I'd never met the guy and I'd somehow made my way to THIS album, I'd be really frigging interested to learn more about him and how he got here.

Luckily, the actual me can provide some guidance to the gedanken me posited above: Sam spent lots of time in CA, most notably at Mills, where he met and played with some very notable scions of free improvisation. But he also discovered that he had a penchant for deeply structured, rhythmically complex music best transacted with "specialists". Then he moved to NYC, where many of the most notable improvisers share exactly this set of combined interests. Work with Kim Cass and Matt Mitchell led to his previous album, Ride Angles; this focused on the deeply structured, etc.. Simultaneous work with Ava Mendoza and others led to associations with Tim Dahl et al., resurfacing his interest in hard-core, "metal", and the like.

That brings us to this album, where the aforementioned sensibilities have been combined to yield an uncanny (and strikingly focused!) musical offering. The individual personalities of each and every participant shine through in the extreme. This is because Sam's choice of Nick, Matt N., Olli, Matt M., and Tim was optimized to affect this precise confidence of expression. I could ramble on about the various tracks, and the various musician's contributions to same, but I'll spare you that.

Let me just close with this: Please set aside the time to listen to this album (at least the first time you hear it) in one sitting. I know that our modern world provides us with myriad prompts to do otherwise. But please... for me... just try it. OK? Sit down, kill the lights, and sink down into the world of Expressive Olympics.

Originally from Lincoln, Nebraska, Sam Ospovat played piano and sang in boys' choir before picking up his first pair of drumsticks in 5th grade. He made his recording debut at Fantasy Studios playing bell tree on Lou Harrison's “Threnody for Carlos Chavez.” He can be heard with Enablers, Flying Luttenbachers, Brandon Seabrook, Angelica Sanchez, Lydia Lunch, Ava Mendoza, and in his own contexts…

samospovat.com