Anteloper is a duo of psychedelic sonic compatriots starring a pair of raggedy celestial sound warriors: trumpeter jaimie branch and drummer Jason Nazary. These longtime friends/collaborators met as young explorers and consider this electrified duo a continuous experiment into an unknown sonic abyss. Improvised organisms, abstract bangers, and mind-bending head boppers are guided by a unique desire to hear what has not been heard before. This here is music made of and for the moment, tipping towards the future, moving feet to the new-new beat. When prompted about the duo’s name, branch comes back rhyming: “An Anteloper, is an antelope, interloper,” adding in a jovial manner, “an antelope walks up to a party, but you know, people don’t want him around.” Turns out, she had the name before the band was formed, and once the duo started rehearsing, it was apparent that THIS was what an Anteloper sounds like. Another creature pops up in the title of the duo’s new album: Pink Dolphins. branch explains that the name is in part a nod to her Colombian heritage (from her Mother). “There’s these amazing pink river dolphins that live in the Amazon – they can swim in salt water, they can chill in fresh water, or they can rock in mixed up brackish waters. They are uniquely ‘aquadelic’ in that way. Aquadelic and super endangered.” In many ways branch & Nazary are like those dolphins – adaptable to varied terrain and moving in many directions through sound. What makes this album special is the way that the duo bravely abandons the known as they leap forward into a path less-travelled. There’s no pre-made template here, only sound. Only a starting point, the destruction of that point, and the telepathic creation of a new way out. The electronics incorporated by both players are navigational devices, transportation sound-crafts. The resulting output is freewheeling, other-worldly, improvisational music, inspired by the unknown and at home in the astro-world. But the driving force behind Anteloper’s psychedelic space-music is not escapism, rather a complete immersion in the hyperreality of the present. Their music is made for destroying concepts of a past & a future, for confronting and embracing the moment, for the betterment of the here and now. It’s music that is as rare and bewilderingly beautiful as that aquadelic pink dolphins surfing through the Amazon River.
I had the opportunity to catch up with jaimie and Jason ahead of the July 13th Anteloper event at The Bur Oak here in Madison. We created a mental mosaic for anyone unfamiliar with the scene that is created live by jaime and Jason. We spent time discussing the brand new release, ‘Pink Dolphins’ and how it pieced toGether, which is a whole lot like what we will experience in a live setting. The starting point, was in fact, also the whole point. I get that. We talk relationship and vibrational connection and how the two put aside each one, and become….Anteloper.
Photo by Tim Saccenti
