My New Band Believe works as a reintroduction and a fresh start, both hyping up its author while acknowledging the collective effort that went into its making. It also serves as an open invitation, a subtle nod that if a listener is willing to meet the music on its own terms, they’ll be rewarded for taking a flying leap into the dark. The group’s debut is a massive and hallucinatory record. It is a collection of music that swerves through wildly different emotional and thematic registers, all the while unraveling an endlessly compelling thread of dream logic. Cameron Picton is an unreliable but charismatic narrator, and together with a cast of all-star players including Kiran Leonard, Caius Williams, Steve Noble, Andrew Cheetham, and indeed, members of caroline, he guides the listener through a rapidly unfolding multi-verse of their own making. With My New Band Believe, he not only comes into his own as a leader but arranges conflicting, fragmentary, and hysterical ideas until they form a brilliant kind of sense.
The Tomato Box creative music ensemble was formed by Michael Brenneis in 1998 to explore the fringes of music where improvisation and composition are rarely distinguishable–always with the goal of developing something unique. The band found much inspiration in the music of predecessors such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and contemporaries such as Dave Douglas’ Tiny Bell Trio, Chris Speed’s Yeah No, and Tim Berne’s Bloodcount. The group recorded “Talisman” in 1998, “Any Road” in 2004, and a couple of limited releases with a shifting cast that consistently included Geoff Brady on Vibraphone/Marimba and percussion, and Michael Brenneis on drums and percussion–who also continues as the principal composer for the band. Austin Cebulske plays the tenor saxophone and clarinet, Matt Blair plays the piano, and Brad Townsend will be on bass. Tomato Box released their third full-length recording titled “The Navigator” in 2023.
