Last Friday, NYC-based composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Max Kutner released his new album Rogue Lash on Orenda Records. Conceived during a long break from live performance, the album evolved from an initial large chamber ensemble idea into a “one-man big band” experiment. Working from home, Kutner used sample libraries, guitars, basses, keyboards, and drum machines, while remotely recording collaborations with musicians across New York City, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, and Boston. For the first time, he also mixed and mastered the entire project himself.

Across its 70-minute duration, Rogue Lash moves through funk, industrial, metal, and drone, all bound together by repetition and groove as structural anchors. The result is hypnotic and textural, but also satirical, with “the music exhibit[ing] a meta-layer of socio-philosophical dimension based on Kutner’s satirized impressions of people, places and assorted phenomena while living in New York City.”

For a taste of what’s on offer, here’s one of the brilliant and intoxicating tracks from Rogue Lash, ‘Pency Tracer’.