Daniel Villarreal
Lados B
On October 15 and 16, 2020, drummer Daniel Villarreal, guitarist Jeff Parker, and bassist Anna Butterss recorded over two afternoons in the backyard of the Chicali Outpost in Los Angeles. For all three musicians, it was the first recording session they had done together in person since the pandemic had crippled the world just seven months earlier. A few select moments from those sessions made it onto Villarreal's critically acclaimed 2022 album Panamá 77, but the bulk of the music remained unreleased.
Lados B is a deep dive into the high-profile, spontaneous music Villarreal, Parker and Butterss made over those two days in 2020. Villarreal leads the group through different rhythmic modes and structures for improvisation - a flow informed as much by the Latin funk of Fania Records as the otherworldly humanity trance of Brain Records - while Parker and Butterss draw on their extensive free-play experience (heard on Parker's recent Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy and the LA side of Makaya McCraven's 2018 LP "Universal Beings") to build harmonic buoys for their spontaneous melody. The result is a wonderfully vibrant illustration of context, creativity, and collective composition from a particularly rich moment in history.
Daniel Villarreal - drums, percussion
Jeff Parker - guitar
Anna Butterss - double bass, electric bass
Rhodes piano on "Salute" by Neal Francis.