Chicago Experimental Rock Supergroup Yr Knives Announce Debut Album Begin Yr Singing: Hear “Fear&Trimbling”

"Post-rock" can describe several quite different subgenres, but whatever the term means to you, Yr Knives are doing it somewhere on their debut single. The Chicago supergroup is the brainchild of composer and arranger Paul Karner, though he's not actually in the band. His idea for two guitars pursuing separate visions independently on the same track brought together Milwaukee-based Andrew Trim (Hanami, Retroreflector) and Brian J Sulpizio (Health&Beauty) for a recording project, which sowed the seeds of Yr Knives. They completed the lineup with bassist Douglas McCombs of Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day plus Quin Kirchner, an in-demand jazz and rock drummer. The result is familiar yet surprising music steeped in the Chicago post-rock tradition, where rock, jazz, electronic, classical, and avant-garde sounds have been colliding in fascinating ways for decades. And like much of that Chicago music, you can trace back influence to 1970s Germany too. Their specific blend of intellectual rigor and rocking-the-fuck-out is extremely pleasing to me. It makes perfect sense that these guys have toured with the Messthetics, and that some of their stated touchstones include Sonny Sharrock, C...