Bristle crams modern jazz, chamber music and garage rock into the same clown car and hits the road running. Bulletproof’s tracks range from the lead-off Notlob, inspired by John Zorn’s cut-up method and titled after Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch, to the Art Ensemble-ish atmospherics of Attica. While the band offers fresh innovation with the graphic score Budmo Jiggler, they also interpret 1960’s legend and Ornette Coleman contemporary Lemuel Crook’s freebop classic Revolution. McKean’s riff-based, quasi-talk show theme Settlin’inin’ contrasts with Wright’s contrapuntal, compartmental vehicle Boxcar Bob. Drizzle mixes light showers with heavy solos from clarinetist Wright and company. Bristle christened their debut CD Bulletproof in joking tribute to themselves for surviving the intricate complexities of McKean and Wright’s compositions. Feeling it was also an apt description for Campbell’s seemingly indestructible young niece, whose fearless jamming on the toy accordion with the band during a practice session inspired the tune Wheezy Breezy, the group chose her as the album’s cover girl. Bristle hopes its listeners feel similarly invincible after experiencing Bulletproof.

Randy McKean - reeds
Cory Wright - tenor saxophone, Bb clarinet,
bass clarinet
Murray Campbell – violin, oboes
Lisa Mezzacappa – double bass



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"Fun and thought-provoking...light-footed and quick...friendly and swingy but then revels in the antics of modern classical music: sudden stop/start moments and the occasional raspy blare from a sax..."- Memory Select

"The group is fresh, vibrant and unpredictable, starting with jaunty ditties or broad soundscapes but then pulling out the rug with outbursts of wild improv, abrupt changes in trajectory or gradual disntegration."
- KZSU 90.1 fm

"No genre is safe from their predatory gene-splicing"
WFMU's Beware of the Blog

"A reed-and-string quartet that revels in the intricate dissonance those instruments can create... this album is surprisingly moving."
- J. Worely, Aiding & Abetting