Review of Wake Up the Dead in Bandcamp Daily
In advance of its release, Wake Up the Dead was reviewed by Peter Margasak in Bandcamp Daily:
This bracing portrait album from Vermont composer Chris Fisher-Lochhead underlines the roots he made in the Chicago new music community—every ensemble here has ties to the city—while he was studying at Northwestern University in the 2010s. The commitment of the various performers reveals a genuine two-way partnership. As the album title makes plain, this music functions as a strong corrective to complacency, not just in our hearing but to our presence in life itself. Straight out of the gate, on the deliciously gnarly opening piece “stutter-step the concept,” a multi-pronged, contrapuntal feast of jagged stops and starts, striated timbres, and fleeting harmonies is elucidated with impressive precision and energy by Ensemble Dal Niente, the group he wrote it for in 2016. The chamber piece wends and winds its way through constantly morphing phrases, shifting sonic perspective like a Calder mobile. Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble articulate the probing contours of the brief “Précis,” balancing irregular exploration with a gorgeously lush sonic palette. JACK Quartet, which includes former Chicago violinist Austin Wulliman, imparts typical brio into two string quartet pieces, whether in the woozy swerves and tactile textures of “Funkionslust” or the wildly rejiggered, retrofitted transcriptions of five different recordings of “Backwater Blues. No less thrilling is the solo bassoon piece “grandFather,” a searing, wildly careening piece interpreted with breathless virtuosity and gritty intensity by Ben Roidl-Ward.