JIM WHITE and MARISA ANDERSON DUO + GOBLIN BAND

JIM WHITE & MARISA ANDERSON DUO is the collaboration between renowned drummer Jim White and acclaimed guitarist Marisa Anderson; it’s a natural union of two of the most intuitive players and listeners working in music. White and Anderson are each very in-demand as collaborators in no small part because of their mastery, versatility and highly expressive playing. The duo have each amassed an impressive body of work, and remain at the vanguard of their practices due to an insatiable curiosity and delight in exploration of new avenues of expression. 

White has honed a tumultuous, multi-toned surge and roar on his kit since playing in Australian instrumental group Dirty Three. His playing in Xylouris White presages what he does here, making a dense, nearly melodic spray of percussive energy that ebbs and crescendos in freeform patterns not too closely tied to time signature. Anderson, for her part, has made some exquisite albums that distill Appalachian folk and blues into luminous, abstract soundscapes. With this duo she plays more aggressively and is less concerned with melody, but retains a knack for eliciting radiant atmospheres from tone and overtone and dissonance.

Their 2020 debut The Quickening exemplified that daring spirit as an exercise in trust: two musicians who had never performed together before committing those first moments in time to record. 2024’s Swallowtail (released this May on Thrill Jockey) is a deepening of that trust, White and Anderson completely immersed in the moment, each attuned to the other fluidly moving as wind and water. Their music is an enchanting and illuminating celebration of process as joy. 

GOBLIN BAND formed organically from intimate sessions of the same name ran out of the HobGoblin Music, a folk music instrument shop in Central London, and organised by a group of queer folk obsessive friends and shop employees. These sessions have given rise to a six- piece band which, though firmly rooted in the traditional music of the British Isles, draws widely on medieval and early music, as well as the folk musical traditions from abroad. The sound concocted employs all manner of strings, squeezeboxes, hurdy gurdy, flutes, horns, bells and whistles. The Goblins interpret folk song in relation to the political upheavals of past and present and strive to make a space for new audiences to experience traditional music in a manner which is both riotously joyful and deeply sincere. Check out their marvellous ‘Come Slack Your Horse!’ album on Broadside Hacks!