Ches Smith Clone Row

Ches Smith's New 2025 Studio Album Clone Row on LP. Features an Adventurous New Quartet With Guitarists Mary Halvorson, Liberty Ellman and Bassist Nick Dunston.

Drummer/composer Ches Smith debuts his inventive new two-guitar quartet – featuring Mary Halvorson, Liberty Ellman and bassist Nick Dunston – on the striking new album Clone Row.

Anyone who has paid attention to the creative music scene over the last couple of decades might be tempted to suspect that Ches Smith has cloned himself a few times over. It’s sometimes hard to believe that a single person could accomplish the dizzying breadth and wide-ranging invention of the drummer/composer’s prolific career.

It might take two or three versions of Smith just to handle the demands for his distinctive drumming as a collaborator with such singular artists as Marc Ribot, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, Darius Jones, James Brandon Lewis, Vijay Iyer, John Tchicai, Dave Holland, David Torn, Terry Riley, Kris Davis, Trevor Dunn, Xiu Xiu, and Secret Chiefs 3.

Another Smith might pursue the deep study of Haitian Vodou music explored on two acclaimed albums by his ensemble We All Break, while a more introspective clone plays on the sparse, investigatory trio albums with violist Mat Maneri and pianist Craig Taborn. Another is locked away to craft the electro-acoustic solo project Congs for Brums. Then a slightly mutated iteration could conjure the uncategorizable mash-ups of 2024’s Laugh Ash, hailed by PopMatters for representing jazz’s “ability to gobble up other styles and turn them into art.”

That all of these eclectic Ches Smiths can coexist in the space of one singularly original, albeit dauntingly prolific, artist is nowhere more vividly apparent than on Clone Row, Smith’s exhilarating new release via Otherly Love Records. The album debuts an adventurous new quartet featuring guitarists Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman and bassist Nick Dunston. As a composer, Smith finds endless possibilities in this seemingly limited instrumentation, weaving together varied threads from his divergent earlier projects in ways that sound not quite like any of them.