Album Notes

Ballroom Dance Is Dead

Ballroom Dance is Dead was started in the fall of 2006 by New Orleans producer and bassist Grant W. Curry (Pleasure Club, PW Long) and Brooklyn-based guitarist/composer Lynn Wright (Bee & Flower, Gachupín, Lepers of Melancholy) to explore the collision of Eno-inspired minimalism, trance, and the spirit of Sonny Sharrock. The first in a projected series of recordings with a revolving-door cast of drummers and horn players, this eponymous offering (released January 2008) is a collaboration with Drums & Tuba drummer Tony Nozero, featuring percussionist Mike Dillon (Critters Buggin’, Les Claypool, Garage a Trois).

From the dub-informed opener “Damascus” to the rockist version of Coltrane’s “India” that closes the album, Ballroom Dance is Dead anchor their take on movement-no-changes to Curry’s bass ostinatos, bringing to the fore the ever-shifting accents of Nozero’s drums and Wright’s patient build from subtle melodicism to a skronk worthy of his Downtown predecessors.


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This isn't babies and Starbucks. This is trance music that is rich and evocative in its layered instrumental colors; a very fluid and dub-like approach to what could be a hoary musical genre. This is instrumental music infused with the spirit of experimental, forward-thinking rock without the pretense, the goblins, and the leagues of crafty musos. This isn't musical wallpaper. If PIL jammed with Big Fun era Miles Davis in a haunted house in New Orleans' Garden District, the results might be similar.
– Chris Becker (Hoodoo Music blog)



Grant W. Curry – bass, effects
Lynn Wright – guitar, piano, effects
Tony Nozero – drums, percussion, electronics
Mike Dillon – percussion, tabla