I’m very happy to find Proxemics, the latest album from Juno 3 (Han-earl Park: guitar; Lara Jones: saxophone and electronics; and Pat Thomas: electronics), in Free Jazz’ Top 16 Albums of 2025, and the Top 10 Albums of Sammy Stein (Free Jazz), Gregg Miller (Free Jazz), Lee Rice Epstein (Free Jazz/But does it swing?), and Antonio Poscic (The Wire/The Quietus/Research Music). (Plus as one-three-hundred-and-fiftieth of Thurston Moore’s 2025 list.)
Park’s one of the most compelling, noisy, and simultaneously humorous and challenging guitarists around…. Jones and Thomas are wonderfully simpatico…. This is just a radically exciting album…. [Read the rest…]
— Lee Rice Epstein (But does it swing?)
The music is challenging… visceral with confronting rhythms and keys that merge… creating a sense of clashing ideas, yet a willingness also to (eventually) end up on the same musical path. [Read the rest…]
— Sammy Stein (Free Jazz)
For once, this is non-idiomatic music worthy of being called such, only loosely tethered to traditions and so confounding and strange that simply listening to it makes you feel alive. [Read the rest…]
— Antonio Poscic (The Quietus)
I’ve said that, while I was mixing the album, I came to “realize this unapologetically unrefined music was probably unreleasable, but I also came to love it more for being delicate as a slab of granite.” I’m very happy that listeners worked hard to prove me wrong on whether the album would find its audience.
I’m honored to have worked with Lara and Pat on this album (you will not find a nicer bunch of trouble-makers), and very proud of the noise we achieved.
[About this album…] [Get the download/order the cassette (Bandcamp)…]
QLH: Sledgehammered
I’m also happy to see Sledgehammered by QLH (Quentin Tolimieri: synthesizers; Luca Marini: drums; and Han-earl Park: guitar) on a Jazz Noise’s Picks of 2025:
A bizarre, 80s-inflected, weirdo stew that absolutely grooves. [Read the rest…]