Tucker, Dave / Pat Thomas / Thurston Moore / Mark Sanders

***Dave Tucker says that he brought this disparate group of musicians together for a live performance at London’s Cafe Oto last March on “an educated guess,” predicting that the artists—Mark Sanders (Drums & Percussion), Pat Thomas (Piano & Keys), Dave Tucker (Guitar) and Thurston Moore (Guitar)—would be able to create something extraordinary through improvisation. The condition of their encounter would later become the collective’s name, an “Educated Guess” and the eponymous title of their first release, the first installment of a two-part volume. The album is another experiment in chance: an eclectic composition of spontaneous performance, layering guitars over complex, sometimes-scattered drum arrangements, and punctuating the noise with distinctive electronic manipulation. Demonstrating their different backgrounds, UK improvised music heroes Thomas and Sanders, already on a few 577 Records’ releases, join forces with UK-based guitarist Tucker (a longtime collaborator with The Fall, Dudu Pukwana, Louis Moholo) and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth to create something deeply inventive and experimental, pushing the boundary of noise music towards a complicated, dissonant electronica.