GRID, the New York City-based noise jazz trio, has teamed up with Lydia Lunch for a single entitled “Stranglehold: The World According to Herbert Huncke” (NNA Tapes). The group is also launching their European tour tonight in London at Cafe OTO, and you can find a full list of upcoming dates below. On GRID’s new single, Lydia Lunch sounds as though she is channeling the once junky poet and former “Mayor of 42nd Street” as her voice captures his nicotine weathered quaver and hipster cadence with eerie similarity.
Huncke was the archetypal “Beat,” jumping trains in the 30s before finding his way to NYC where he lived as a petty thief and drug addict. After a stint in the Merchant Marine, he returned to the city and met William S. Burroughs when the Naked Lunch author sold him a submachine gun and morphine syrettes. Burroughs would go on to introduce the poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist Jack Kerouac to Huncke, and Kerouac would coin the term “Beat Generation” after Huncke told him “I’m beat”–meaning without money or hope.
GRID is composed of saxophonist Matt Nelson, bassist Tim Dahl, and drummer Nick Podgurksi. On “Stranglehold: The World According to Herbert Huncke,” the trio’s stumbling drum bursts, deep bass ache, and buzzing horn exhalations provide a menacing Hells’ Kitchen vibe. Eventually, Lunch’s Huncke emerges from the sewers dressed stylishly and offering the keys to the Underworld, just as the trio recedes below her voice into the itchy white noise of junk sickness.
GRID Live Fall 2019:
11/4 | London | Cafe OTO
11/5 | Lille | CCL
11/6 | Amsterdam | Occii
11/7 | Leipzig | Villa Kuriosum
11/8 | Gdansk | Jazz Jantar Festival
11/9 | Berlin | Villa Kuriosum
11/10 | Stuttgart | Container City
11/11 | Geneva | Urgence Disk Records
11/12 | La Chaux-De Fonds | ABC Theatre
