Marc Ribot reconnects two volatile quartets on Hurry Red Telephone

Marc Ribot’s Hurry Red Telephone is his first all-instrumental album since 2014’s Live at the Village Vanguard, but it is less a return to a fixed format than a restart after the death of bassist Henry Grimes. Drummer Chad Taylor provides the bridge to that earlier trio, joining Ribot across two separately recorded quartet lineups that approach the same material from different histories.

One session captures a working touring group in Berlin with bassist Sebastian Steinberg and alto saxophonist Briggan Krauss. The other comes from an earlier New York date with bassist Hilliard Greene and either James Brandon Lewis or Brian Settles on tenor saxophone. David Watson adds bagpipes to the opening “New Monster,” pushing the album’s already unstable blend of free improvisation, jazz ensemble discipline and rock physicality into even stranger territory.

The six-track set combines four Ribot originals with two compositions by Haitian guitarist and composer Frantz Casséus, Ribot’s former teacher. Across pieces including “Faucets of Terrible,” “Ghost of Sleeping,” “Nan Guinan” and “Rara,” the personnel are treated less like supporting players than active agents: Taylor redirects the pulse, the horns pull the structures apart, and Ribot’s guitar moves between abrasion, lyricism and humor.

Released by Pi Recordings on October 30, the album’s title comes from Richard Siken’s poem “Several Tremendous,” whose image of rebuilding language after collapse resonated with Ribot. That connection gives the record’s two-session design a clear emotional frame: not an attempt to replace the Grimes-era trio, but a way to recover momentum through a new collective language.