NOMO: New Album/Tour

NOMO set to release new album in May / Tour Starts Now

NOMO

The sonic empire of the Michigan-based collective is expanding; busting up genres and musical borders with astonishing results. Less than a year after the acclaimed Ghost Rock, NOMO have completed its spirited sister album-recorded during the Ghost Rock sessions and tours. NOMO’s fourth full-length Invisible Cities (due May 05, 2009 on Ubiquity Records) is informed by their ceaseless traveling, and visits to places both real and unreal. With a theme stolen from Italian novelist Italo Calvino, each tune on Invisible Cities is a little world of its own, dense with rhythm and timbre. Hot horns blaze through intersecting lines, heavy percussion drives the band down winding streets, the bass rumbles in some subterranean corridor. The sounds come from far reaching points, not from a fixed place on a globe, but from an area of the human spirit; One that is joyous, open and in motion.

Like Ghost Rock, Invisible Cities reaches into new places both sonically and emotionally, and pulls up some real bangers: The title track’s horns are drenched in Echoplex and its driving beat is straight from the swamp. “Bumbo,” Moondog‘s best tune, gets a NOMO island makeover, with a set of antique fire extinguishers clanging away in a 21st century steel drum style. “Crescent” is a shimmering silver stream of electric kalimbas, with hand claps and bamboo flutes giving the tune a more delicate feel than NOMO has offered up on previous albums. Giving “Elijah” a listen, it’s immediately apparent that this is stirring spiritual jazz of a higher order; the tune was written as a lament for one of bandleader Elliot Bergman‘s childhood friends. Warn Defever‘s (His Name Is Alive) immaculate production work creates a space where the music can grow, develop, layer on top of itself, and reveal this band in artful new ways.

NOMO is not just a band of thieves, garbage pickers, drifters, jammers, and players. In their soul, NOMO truly is a party band. From their roots, rocking sweaty basement shows in Ann Arbor and Detroit, to their current gig, rocking sweaty basement shows and the occasional jazz festival in Brooklyn, Chicago, New Orleans, London, Sevilla, or Montreal, the band has developed its own form of celebratory dance music owing as much to Can, Eno, and M.I.A. as it does Kuti, Francis Bebey, and Funkadelic. They’ve upped the energy level on recent jaunts and it’s impossible to find a stationary body in the house. This music moves people, and it’s refreshing to see teen hipsters get down with crate diggers, jazz heads nod along with the noise kids at a NOMO show. The band crams three drum sets into the silver Ford Econoline, along with enough electric kalimbas to pull-off all of the two hour marathon sets, plus a few extra to sell to the audience. Horns and guitars fit on top of the amps, and it’s a touring six-piece-sonic-arsenal that packs a pretty heavy punch.

Check out “Invisible Cities”
http://aampromo.com/nomo/NOMO_01_Invisible_Cities.mp3

Invisible Cities Track Listing:
01. Invisible Cities
02. Bumbo
03. Waiting
04. Crescent
05. Patterns
06. Ma
07. Banners On High
08. Elijah
09. Nocturne

NOMO heads out on tour today (5/1). Here are the dates:

05/01/09 Fri The Whole Minneapolis, MN
05/15/09 Fri UW Memorial Union Terrace Madison, WI
05/16/09 Sat The Picador Iowa City, IA
05/19/09 Tue Crocodile Cafe Seattle, WA
05/20/09 Wed Doug Fir Portland, OR
05/21/09 Thu WOW Hall Eugene, OR
05/22/09 Fri Bottom of the Hill San Francisco, CA
05/23/09 Sat Spaceland Los Angeles, CA
05/24/09 Sun Beauty Bar Las Vegas, NV
05/26/09 Tue Belly Up Aspen, CO
05/27/09 Wed Quixote’s True Blue Denver, CO
06/12/09 Fri Ann Arbor Summer Festival Ann Arbor, MI