SQUANDERERS are the glowingly new—2024 vintage—trio of guitarists Wendy Eisenberg and David Grubbs alongside multi-instrumentalist and legendary producer Kramer. Having begun SQUANDERERS as a duo in 2023 for Kramer’s “Rings of Saturn” box set, Grubbs & Kramer now enter the arena of live performance with the addition of bona-fide guitar slayer Eisenberg, a dream of a foil to Grubbs’s grubbslike guitarisms, setting the scene for Kramer’s bass to follow his musical divining rod.

The debut collaboration by three unique composers/musicians, If a Body Meet a Body, explores the instantaneous relations between sound, gesture and space. All pieces are the results of spontaneous composition, the group playing together live and wild, in a New York studio. One afternoon of dream torched thoughts colliding, proving that hands on strings open lines of direct commune with the vastness of a collective unknown.

The track “Theme for Viewers At Home” is being highlighted for the album’s release, alongside a piece of ambient-cinema by Kramer.

Given the almost absurd collaborative skillsets of these three supremely versatile SQUANDERERS, who knew which directions the group might have taken for their first album, much less what’s yet to come? SQUANDERERS’ music pivots around improvisation, and shockingly little was decided in advance of their convening; Kramer, Wendy, and David came to the group’s assembling with the confidence of what would be would be, que sera sera. You couldn’t divine these results.

SQUANDERS
If a Body Meet a Body
TRACK LISTING:

Side One:
Theme for Squanderers
Theme for Contrails
Theme for Silent Cowboys
Theme for Viewers at Home

Side Two:
Theme for Pattern Recognition
Theme for Quiet Car
Theme for Squanderers (Reprise)

Wendy Eisenberg is an improviser and songwriter who uses guitar, pedals, the tenor banjo, the computer, the synthesizer, and the voice. Their work spans genres, from jazz to noise to avant rock to delicate songs; their performances span venues, from international festivals to intimate basements. Though often working solo as both a songwriter and improviser, with acclaimed releases on Tzadik, Ba Da Bing, VDSQ, Out of your Head, and Dear Life, they also perform in the rock band Editrix, and in endless other combinations of their heroes and peers including Bill Orcutt, Caroline Davis, Carla Kihlstedt, John Zorn, Billy Martin, and Allison Miller. They also write about music and other things, with published essays on music in Sound American, Arcana XIII, and the Contemporary Music Review.

David Grubbs has released fifteen solo albums and was a member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait. He has performed with Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, Luc Ferrari, Susan Howe, Will Oldham, the Red Krayola, and many others. Grubbs is Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, and author of books including Good night the pleasure was ours, The Voice in the Headphones, Now that the audience is assembled, and Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording.

Kramer is a composer/musician/filmmaker and multi-instrumentalist who has worked with artists as diverse as John Zorn, Butthole Surfers, Bill Frisell, Ween, The Fugs, Thurston Moore, Penn Jillette, Allen Ginsberg, Jad Fair, and Laraaji, to name but a few. He is also a renowned record producer (Galaxie 500, Low, Daniel Johnston, Will Oldham, etc.) and the founder of the iconic NYC record label, Shimmy-Disc. He rarely performs onstage, and Squanderers is his first long-term recording project to include live performances since 1999. He currently lives and works in the Appalachian Temperate Rainforest.

order If a Body Meet a Body HERE