White Out

***WHITE OUT are indeed “white” and, in transcendence of such inherent nothingness, most definitely “out”. LINN CULBERTSON and TOM SURGAL met in the still wild mania of 1986 New York City in front of CBGB during a Big Black show. After discovering mutual fascinations with the avant-garde marginalia of No Wave, Free Jazz, Noise Rock etc., began to play music in a secret location on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Surgal had been playing drums his entire life informed by the majestic energy of Elvin Jones, as well as the primal insolence of Bradley Field (of Teenage Jesus & The Jerks “fame”). Linn had come out of modern 20th XX composition studies in Madison, Wisconsin. By the mid-’90s White Out had become one of the more interesting and increasingly stunning lights on a downtown scene that had grown a keen and critical eye on contemporary moves in improvised music. Ecstatic Peace released the first White Out CD Red Shift in 1995, and in 2001 released Drunken Little Mass. The UK based ATP label released the China Is Near CD in 2005. Senso is a live recording from two shows at the heralded and, sadly shut, Tonic club in NYC December 18, 2004. It was a lovely evening when JIM O’ROUKE and THURSTON MOORE, both of whom had played with White Out, but never together, would set the controls for the heart of the universe. Each set was its own distinct drama and captured the four players in a unified mind meld bringing the audience with them on a spirit-high journey.