BURNT SUGAR THE ARKESTRA CHAMBER was originally conceived in 1999 as a forum for the New York area improvisational musician to compose, record and perform material which reflects the breadth and depth of American diasparan music in the 21st century. The intent of the Arkestra Chamber, through the deployment of Butch Morris’s conduction system, is to make every performance a fresh interpretation of its constituent parts.
Rather than limit ourselves to the straight jackets that the commercial recording industry uses to market contemporary Black Music, Burnt Sugar freely moves amongst many styles, eras and genres to devise its own exciting hybrids. These hybrids are based on a solid foundation of various musical traditions and the use of cutting-edge music technology. In this sense the group mission honors its deepest inspirations, the first post-modernists of American music – Duke Ellington, Sun Ra, Parliament Funkadelic and The Art Ensemble of Chicago.
BURNT SUGAR is a territory band, a neo-tribal thang, a community hang, a society music guild aspiring to the condition of all that is molten, glacial, racial, spacial, oceanic, mythic, antiphonal and telepathic.
All our love to Chaka Khan, Nina Simone, George Clinton and the P-funk All Stars, Lady Day, Miles Davis, Eddy Hazel, A.R. Kane, Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, Duke Ellington and Betty Davis for opening the gates of paradise and pushing us through.
Butch Morris’s Conduction System for Orchestral Improvisation is the preferred mode of channeling for this Gotham based ensemble of pan-ethnic sound warriors. Everyone of them is a border crossing trans-national whether they’ll admit it or not.
Spontaneous combustion being an occupational hazard in Gotham, Burnt Sugar is how we keep it real, surreal, arboreal, aquatic, incendiary. If only because we might be mistaken for the world’s second fully improvisational acid-funk band.
To quote Arthur Jafa, we don’t strive to be original, but Aboriginal. Like the songlines and the dreaming, like Tracey Moffatt and The Last Wave, like Cubase and Cabrini Green. One foot in the prehistoric, the other in the post human. In this journey, you’re the journal and we’re the journalists. Houston, Houston, do you read?
About The Band
BURNT SUGAR THE ARKESTRA CHAMBER was originally conceived in 1999 as a forum for the New York area improvisational musician to compose, record and perform material which reflects the breadth and depth of American diasparan music in the 21st century. The intent of the Arkestra Chamber, through the deployment of Butch Morris’s conduction system, is to make every performance a fresh interpretation of its constituent parts.
Rather than limit ourselves to the straight jackets that the commercial recording industry uses to market contemporary Black Music, Burnt Sugar freely moves amongst many styles, eras and genres to devise its own exciting hybrids. These hybrids are based on a solid foundation of various musical traditions and the use of cutting-edge music technology. In this sense the group mission honors its deepest inspirations, the first post-modernists of American music – Duke Ellington, Sun Ra, Parliament Funkadelic and The Art Ensemble of Chicago.
BURNT SUGAR is a territory band, a neo-tribal thang, a community hang, a society music guild aspiring to the condition of all that is molten, glacial, racial, spacial, oceanic, mythic, antiphonal and telepathic.
All our love to Chaka Khan, Nina Simone, George Clinton and the P-funk All Stars, Lady Day, Miles Davis, Eddy Hazel, A.R. Kane, Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, Duke Ellington and Betty Davis for opening the gates of paradise and pushing us through.
Butch Morris’s Conduction System for Orchestral Improvisation is the preferred mode of channeling for this Gotham based ensemble of pan-ethnic sound warriors. Everyone of them is a border crossing trans-national whether they’ll admit it or not.
Spontaneous combustion being an occupational hazard in Gotham, Burnt Sugar is how we keep it real, surreal, arboreal, aquatic, incendiary. If only because we might be mistaken for the world’s second fully improvisational acid-funk band.
To quote Arthur Jafa, we don’t strive to be original, but Aboriginal. Like the songlines and the dreaming, like Tracey Moffatt and The Last Wave, like Cubase and Cabrini Green. One foot in the prehistoric, the other in the post human. In this journey, you’re the journal and we’re the journalists. Houston, Houston, do you read?