\"Invocation\" is the new album from Chicago-based improvising trio Mako Sica.
\"Invocation\" is Mako Sica's 7th release. \"Our music, in the past and on Invocation, is not easily pinned down. We write, as a band, compositions that take us somewhere and hopefully the listener as well. Each song is like a mansion, with different rooms that represent different emotions. We can build the mansion as big or small as we want. There's no literal meaning, it's a piece of music when it moves you. We all listen to different music, but there are some commonalities. Heavy jazz influence that's easy to pick up on and also the blues. The layout is more akin to the way soundtracks are laid out with dynamics and long dissolving atmospherics,\" said the band.
The album comes out after a rough period for Mako Sica. \"The songs came together pretty quick. We wrote them with our longtime drummer Mike Kendrick before and during a tour in 2013, then in January of the following year he told us he was moving and quit the band. We tried another drummer before Chaetan Newell came along. These songs are all three of us put to the test - Chaetan stepping into an already existing music chemistry that's lasted almost a decade and Przemysław and I ripping these songs apart for the third time, believing in them so much that we would still want to play them with someone else. Throughout the whole process, the songs naturally evolved, mostly to keep ourselves entertained.\"
For the initial tracking the trio of Przemysław Drążek (Rope), Brent Fuscaldo and Chaetan Newell visited Greg Norman's home studio on the South Side of Chicago. There, they tracked all the instruments playing together live in one day. Vocals were done later in the underworld (where band rehearses). Chaetan had quite a bit of experience recording also so he took on the role of mixing the session at his studio. CD version has a different cover and artwork courtesy of Kuba Sokólski (Merkabah).
For those in desperate need of labeling Mako Sica: think of Scratch Acid running into Sun City Girls jamming on a desert at night. You get the idea. Or maybe not.
