Jeff Parker Details New Album ‘Forfolks’ & Shares Single

Guitarist Jeff Parker announced a new solo album, Forfolks, due out via International Anthem and Nonesuch Records on December 10. The longtime Tortoise guitarist also shared the single, “Suffolk.”

Graeme Gibson captured Forfolks at Jeff’s home Sholo Studio in Altadena, California. The record’s eight solo guitar tracks include four new compositions that are “loop-driven, stratiform works that marry melodic improvisation with electronic textures,” as per a press release. The LP also contains similar reworkings of two previously released tracks by Parker “Four Folks” — a song Jeff released in 1995 — and “La Jetée,” which the guitarist recorded with Isotope 217 and Tortoise in the late ‘90s. Forfolks also features Parker’s interpretations of Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty” and jazz standard “My Ideal.”

“I am trying to create a sonic world for me to wander around in,” Jeff said of the new album in a press release. Chicago musician and longtime Parker collaborator Matthew Lux detailed Jeff’s unique style in the liner notes for the album. Read an excerpt below:

It’s a particular thing to hear Jeff play solo. He is an unusually selfless improviser, often times laying out and highlighting the contributions of his band mates. He’s never been one to play three notes where none would suffice. On this recording, however, he is by himself, joined only by his own ideas, looped or frozen, to flesh out the music he’s creating in his mind. Hearing him craft entire sound worlds on these eight selections gives us an opportunity to really see how Parker orders sound … He eschews genre playing and chooses a painterly approach to coloring the music, maintaining a deeply personal voice without weighing down the music with obvious stylistic maneuverings.

The single “Suffolk” arrived with a video directed by Cauleen Smith. Watch it below:

Forfolks Tracklist:

1. Off Om
2. Four Folks
3. My Ideal
4. Suffolk
5. Flour of Fur
6. Ugly Beauty
7. Excess Success
8. La Jetée