Double Morris

It’s likely that, if you know Zoots Houston, it’s backing up some of the East Coast’s more exploratory names. Houston’s been found beside Ryley Walker, Jazz improviser Fredrick Longberg-Holm, and playing on records from Rider/Horse. For his solo debut he’s threading the needle between those poles, crafting a record that’s corroded by country, but just as comfortable among the post-rock ruckus of Chicago’s brittlest bunch. Double Morris chafes the speakers, ripping riffs in two and twisting phrases into rumpled bravado. The album swings like a muscle spasm — contorted, chompin’ on tin and turbulence.

Houston’s years among the marauders of improvisation have given him a sense of space and that’s apparent on Sunshine Numbers. The record fills the room with rapturous guitars only to back down into a spiraling din of pedal steel and feedback fragments. Like the Chicago contingent it sidles up to, Double Morris is brittle, dry and dusted, but let the listener take a dirt bath in their arid ambience. If you’ve been huffing the dry goods from 12xU and Ever/Never, this one’s gonna get you going.

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