Photo: Tarishi Gupta

Brooklyn-based composer-improviser collective Tropos have announced the release of a new full-length album titled Switches. A nine-track anthology, Switches saw Phillip Golub (piano), Ledah Finck (violin), Yuma Uesaka (clarinets), and Aaron Edgcomb (drums/percussion), who make up the collective, embrace a true collaborative approach to composition, with all members bringing in ideas. Tropos crafted the album over the course of more than a year, with mentoring from Darius Jones, before hitting the road to test ideas on a DIY tour across the East Coast, Canada, and the Midwest. As the press release describes, the album “captures the sparks that fly when four distinct voices toggle between individual visions and shared intuition”.

Switches will see the light of day on June 27th through Endectomorph Music and the band shared today ‘The Best Donuts in Pennsylvania’, a playful and wild track composed by violinist Ledah Finck. Speaking about it, the band says:

“Everyone’s trying to tell you what’s best. Sometimes, you choose to believe them. You find the best donut shop, and you go back day after day until you’ve tried each kind. Your palate is bursting with different flavors, a saturated explosion of sweetness. The sugar high is intense in “The Best Donuts in Pennsylvania.” Its obsessive opening figures give way to a revelation that the ensemble is not just a many-limbed single-brained creature but in fact several children playing a game of chance or chicken and sometimes throwing tantrums.”

Listen to ‘The Best Donuts in Pennsylvania’ below.