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Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog – the visionary post-fusion rock trio comprising guitarist/songwriter/activist Marc Ribot, bassist Shahzad Ismaily, and drummer/percussionist Ches Smith – have shared “Soldiers In the Army of Love,” available today for streaming and download. The anthemic manifesto precedes the band’s eagerly awaited fifth album, Connection, arriving via Knockwurst Records on Friday, July 14. Pre-orders are available now.
LISTEN TO “SOLDIERS IN THE ARMY OF LOVE”
PRE-ORDER CONNECTION
“‘We hold these truths to be self-evident...,’” says Marc Ribot. “Sound familiar? Ah, they were off to such a good start! But then they fucked it up: ‘...that all men are created equal.’ Yup folks, they really wrote that. What about women? Non-multi-queer-and other gendered humans? Even worse— when they said ‘men,’ they meant ‘white men.’ Oy. What a mess. [And yet, if there’s nothing ‘we’ hold to be self-evident, there’s no ‘we,’ right? Big problem.] But it’s all ok now. Ceramic Dog fixed it! ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident…that all PEOPLE are created equal…[for example] Muslim Jewish Black White Yellow Brown Gay Straight are all created equal.’ (would have added a bunch of other varieties of PEOPLE too, but ran out of 8th notes).
“Now that the first line is fixed, we got down to the ‘when in the course of human events’ part: ‘When they persecute our brother, take the choices from our sister, hurt our non-binary siblings, beat the immigrants among us…we stand up, we fight back, we resist.’
“How will we fight back? The song’s title refers to the pacifist civil right movement’s ‘We Are Soldiers In the Army’. And of course, the ‘army of love[rs]’ refers to Ancient Rome’s very non-pacifist army, evoked (by poet Adrienne Rich?) at the very first Gay Pride march (‘An army of lovers can never lose’). We leave the Malcolm/Martin debate to future generations.
“But take note: Mr. or Mrs. Nazi, Fascist, homophobe, sexist, white supremacist, etc.: we’re not going to debate our humanity or political equality with you. There is a ‘we’. And there are truths we hold to be self-evident. And fighting for those truths is how (thanks, Hannah Arendt) we express our love of the world.”
Declared by Ribot to be “the best record we’ve ever done,” Connection sees Ceramic Dog furthering their long flirtation with various strains of rock ‘n’ roll while remaining fully entrenched in their signature approach to improvised music, augmented by contributions by such special guests as singer-songwriter Syd Straw, keyboardist Anthony Coleman, saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, organist Greg Lewis, clarinetist Oscar Noriega, and cellist Peter Sachon. The album was first heralded last month with the ferocious title track, “Connection,” a loose, lo-fi instrumental deeply informed by the scuzz-fueled history of Lower East Side noise rock from the Velvet Underground to White Hassle.
LISTEN TO “CONNECTION”
Ceramic Dog – who recently performed a custom composition to soundtrack the Gucci Men’s Fall/Winter 2023 Fashion Show in Milan, Italy (streaming HERE) – will celebrate Connection with a wide-ranging international live schedule, the trio’s first full tour in more than half a decade. For complete details and ticket availability, please visit www.marcribot.com/tour-dates.
MARC RIBOT’S CERAMIC DOG - TOUR 2023
JUNE
30 – Gexto, Spain – Getxo Jazz-Muxikebarri Zentroa
JULY
1 – Rotterdam, Netherlands – LantarenVenster
4 – Copenhagen, Denmark – Musik Loppen
6 – Braga, Portugal – gnration-Blackbox
7 – Lisbon, Portugal – Grande Auditório de Culturgest
8 – Warsaw, Poland – Pardon, To Tu
10 – München, Germany – Muffatwerk/Ampere
11 – Forli, Italy – Lipo 340
12 – Rome, Italy - Casa del Jazz PARCO
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With Connection, Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog have pushed their long-brewing tension between traditional pop songcraft and avantgarde improvisational music to the breaking point, bridging their customary genre-agnostic approach with elements of glam boogie, minimalist disco, psychedelic boogaloo, garage-punk-against-the-machine agitprop, and so much more. Recorded at Figure 8 Recording in Brooklyn, NY, and mixed by Ben Greenberg (Danny Elfman, Depeche Mode, Show Me the Body) the album sees Ribot – whose prodigious, impossible-to-categorize body of work as bandleader and musician spans no wave and jazz, Brazilian and Cuban music, roots and avant-garde and protest songs (often at the same time) alongside legendary collaborations with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, The Lounge Lizards, John Zorn, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Caetano Veloso, and Laurie Anderson (to name but a few) – continuing to utilize Ceramic Dog as the vessel for his distinctive stream-of-consciousness songwriting, penning three out of the album’s four vocal tracks including the groove-infected “Ecstasy” (showcasing Anthony Coleman’s slinky Farfisa and longtime friend and associate Syd Straw behind the mic).
From the anthemic manifesto “Soldiers in the Army of Love” to the unhinged ranting of “Heart Attack” and indescribable “No Name,” Ceramic Dog unleash a fury of complex time signatures, blues abstraction, and free-blowing energy to create their most unapologetically audacious collection thus far, their one-of-a-kind daring evidenced by the unlikely cover of Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz’s “That’s Entertainment,” written especially for the 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical film The Band Wagon but here, in Ribot and Co’s hands, deconstructs Hollywood cliches while simultaneously winking at both the post-punk and post-Cultural Revolution iterations of the Gang of Four. Fueled by what Ribot calls “several bolts of creative lightning,” Connections stands as a vibrant, odd, and in many ways definitive milestone in what is truly a singular creative journey for Marc Ribot and Ceramic Dog, its zeitgeist-busting sound and vision not only affirming their place in the musical universe but raising the stakes for whatever comes next.
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MARC RIBOT’S CERAMIC DOG
CONNECTION
(Knockwurst Records)
Release Date: Friday, July 14
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