Since the 2011 debut of Dave Harrington’s revered Darkside project with long-time collaborator, Nicolas Jaar, Harrington has become one of this century’s most unlikely guitar heroes. Harrington started as a jazz bassist steeped in the experimental New York world of Bill Frisell and John Zorn. He now blends avant-garde improvisational jazz roots to psychedelic touchstones like Jerry Garcia and David Gilmour, to sophisticated dance-floor burners. While his latest album, Pure Imagination, No Country, doesn’t necessarily sound like a Darkside record, it exists at a different axis in the same continuum. Harrington uses guitar as a lead voice, sculpting and creating a new core language with a gifted cadre of players including vibraphonist Will Shore, synth bassist Andrew Fox, drummer Samer Ghadry, and post-rock polymath Lars Horntveth of Jagga Jazzist.  

Harrington also announces a 5-night residency at Threes Brewing in Brooklyn Jan. 30th - Feb 3rd featuring a rotating line-up of players including Brian Chase, Joe Russo, Kenny Wollesen, Stuart Bogie, Yuka C. Honda, Shahzad Ismaily, Greg Fox, Jeremy Gustin, Spencer Zahn, Samer Ghadry and Will Shore, as well as at Zebulon in Los Angeles on February 21st.  

This record is the result of developing a way of playing and thinking, developing structures and ideas about improvisation, that were created while on tour and during time spent gigging heavily in the NYC scene with improvisers from lots of criss-crossing worlds—from jazz and new music, to psych rock, electronic music and, jam bands.  These methods were employed in a recording context with my closest collaborators and longtime friends in addition to some crucial special guests.  The record was then put through what I’m starting to call or imagine as the “Bitches Brew Method” - capturing raw improvisation and composed material in equal measure and then treating THAT as raw material that can be turned into something new.  It involves a lot of collaboration, a lot of trust, a lot of improvisation most of all, and a lot of presence.  I’m hoping that the residencies and really all the shows that we play around this record will mirror this process in their own way.  It will be a chance to present the spirit of the record - presenting a developed and refined way of improvising honed through years of close collaboration mixed with the dangerous and exciting elements of constantly working with new and old collaborators, disrupting the system while it’s being codified.  

Harrington embodies the notion that you have to master the rules before you can ignore them. Dave Harrington’s Pure Imagination, No Country arrives February. 1 via Yeggs Records.

Listen here:  https://soundcloud.com/user-424718125/sets/dave-harrington-group-pure/s-yQshI