Cole Pulice at Rozz-Tox -- October 18.
Saturday, October 18, 8 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
Performing locally in support of their 2025 release Land's End Eternal, which The Quietus hailed as "an album of fluttering ambience and uncanny cyborg systems," the Oakland, California-based electroacoustic saxophonist, improviser, and composer Cole Pulice headlines an October 18 concert at Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox, Treblezine calling the artist's latest a work in which "dissonant fragments and jagged edges settle in your ears with a sense of decay that is simultaneously unsettling and mesmerizing."
A member of Bon Iver’s 22, A Million touring saxophone section in 2016, instrumentalist, composer, and improviser Pulice (pronounced puh-lee-ché) traffics in shimmering, otherworldly beauty. On Land’s End Eternal, their first album for Leaving Records, the Minneapolis native expands their compositional palette beyond signal-processed saxophone to include layers of electric guitar and lush choral arrangements. The result is a prismatic collection of pastoral chamber jazz in six parts. Pulice’s previous release, a 22-minute electroacoustic odyssey titled If I Don’t See You in the Future, I’ll See You In the Pasture (Longform Editions, 2023), was named "Best New Music" by Pitchfork and included in the publication’s "Best Songs of the 2020s." Pulice has also released a smattering of solo and collaborative work on beloved labels including Moon Glyph, Aural Canyon, and Cached Media. Their performance history includes appearances at Pitchfork Music Festival, Rewire ÜBERJAZZ, Drone Not Drones, and Noise Pop Festival.
Raving about the artist's gifts, Zedoisbois stated, "Talent and daring have led Cole Pulice to achieve a transmutation in which the traditional notions of jazz and ambient music are blurred into an eternal range of possibilities and forms. Celebrated as a studio musician who has accompanied Bon Iver, Godspeed You!, Black Emperor, and many others, the American’s solo career reveals an understanding of improvisation as a way of life (and, by extension, composition as a living medium). In recent years, his solo work has emerged as a major creative force in current experimentalism. Anchored in the saxophone, he takes the instrument to electroacoustic approaches, extracting from this simultaneity of natures paths to new worlds.
"Using effects pedals, MIDI controllers, and contact microphones, Pulice turns sound into an act of sculpture in real time, without resorting to overdubs. Sound holograms that recognise the hypnotic candour of Terry Riley or the exoplanetary landscapes of Jon Hassell, in a delicate melodic crystallisation. The presence of Alice Coltrane inevitably hovers as the eternal master of ceremonies of these transcendent movements, leaving the physical body of things behind. Each piece brings a common soothing element, infecting the senses and feeding the mind with a deeply telluric and kaleidoscopic imagery – where colours reach other shades. No detail is left out of this harmonic logic that not only agglutinates, but expands energy."
Cole Pulice performs his headlining concert in Rock Island on October 18 with an additional set by Iowa City's Jack Lion, admission to the 8 p.m. all-ages concert is $10 in advance and $15 at the door (cash only), and more information on the night is available by calling (309)200-0978 and visiting RozzTox.com.
