THREE-LAYER CAKE

Stove Top (2021)

Watt’s new album is a tour through countless styles: punk, jazz, dub, funk, doom metal and more. Its experimental nature is built into the process, in fact. Mike Pride, the percussionist, appeared – remotely – on Watt’s radio show, and the two decided to work together. “I’ve never met him in person,” Watt explains. “But he was talking to me about the saxophonist Jack Wright, the avant-garde composer Bob Marsh, as well as all this kind of improvising and shit.” Price then sent some drum tracks across to Watt, who responded by adding bass-lines. The cloud-based collaboration needed something else, though – a third member to complete the developing project. Enter Brandon Seabrook, a guitarist and banjo player who had previously impressed Watt at a gig in San Pedro. It turned out that Pride already had Seabrook in mind, and so the line-up was complete. “I asked him, ‘Do you want to try this?’, and the result is that he brings a third layer – another layer to the cake. He brings a secret. To me this was a total validation of what music can be. Not all this making excuses why things are bumming you out, instead of trying to look for the old word: opportunity. We ask ourselves how we can get over some of these obstacles.” The result is an album that has no limits – of genre or expectation.