Beat Reader

KV and Chicago's finest fivesome once again team up with Bob Weston to notch out BEAT READER - the quintet's 12th album for Atavistic over the course of the last decade-plus. Inasmuch as one may contemplate the recorded works of Sonic Youth as a genre unto itself, The V5 may now lay claim to such a distinction: existing simultaneously inside AND outside the realm of Jazz.

Vandermark's compositions have recently become even more guided by his respect for (and sonic interpretations of) the traditional arts. Appropriately, the first 1000 copies of BEAT READER come replete with a full-length bonus disc entitled 'The New York Suite'- Ken's compositional tribute to painters (DeKooning, Hoffman, Pollock & Rothko), composers (Brown, Cage, Feldman & Wolff) and improvisers (Cherry, Lacy, Shepp & Taylor) - some of the luminaries and legends that have inspired him over the years.