Earlier this summer Death Blues, the shape-shifting project from Milwaukee percussionist/composer Jon Mueller, released Non-Fiction, an audaciously loud, intriguingly dense manifesto of an album that, months after its release, continues to reveal new layers. With that record still fresh in our minds, next week Death blues will release another album, Ensemble, that plays like a culmination of almost everything Mueller has ever recorded, building on the confrontational post-rock of Pele, the beautiful patter of Collections of Colonies of Bees, the joyous release of Volcano Choir and the intricate shadows of his more experimental solo releases, while introducing a whole new sandbox for Mueller to play in. It's glorious.
Although the proximity of the album's release to Non-Fiction's is bound to confuse a few people, there's no mistaking the two records. The volume extremes of Non-Fiction have been replaced by a steady symphonic overload, courtesy of collaborator William Ryan Fritch. Fritch is a film composer by trade, and he brings a cinematic scope to these songs, the biggest and most expansive Mueller has ever attempted. It's an absolute marvel of an album, and thanks to NPR, you can stream it ahead of its Tuesday, Sept. 9 release, via the site's First Listen page.
