The Rites by Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber conducted by Butch Morris

Eclectic and experimental, yet taut and surefooted, it's a delicate and wonderfully realised balancing act embracing jazz, hiphop, soul, rock, and blues that never loses grip of its groove."

"Despite owing absolutely nothing to Houston, Texas's lazy and hazy remixing, Chopped & Screwed Volume Two is no disappointment. Most notable amongst it's 18 tracks are three laptop compositions from Black Body Radiation, Tate's own movie about a futuristic "New York populated by various Muslim sects and mystic extraterrestials". Parred down and mechanical, they lack the visceral thrills of Burnt Sugar's live instrumental work, yet the same patiently measured tensions are at play, creating an ominous and eerie dystopian vision.

However, the best is kept until last, with Butch Morris himself making a closing appearance. Discordant as the ribbons (the Burnt Sugar horn section) blows over the rolling basslines of "Butch Vs the Wretches" may be, their ease and fluidity make it clear that the veteran cornet player is both perfectly at home and perfectly in tune with his collaborators."

As Ice Cube would say...."It's a Good Day!"

Critical response to The Rites:

Christian Marclay 's Top Ten in Music from Art Forum's Best of 2003 December issue:

2. Butch Morris and Burnt Sugar, the Rites conductions's Inspired by Stravinsky's le Sacre Du Printemps (TruGROID/Avantgroid)

"Greg Tate's band under Butch Morris's baton. Seeing the maestro in a live "conduction" is like being in his brain - his thought process at once visible and audible."

Tom Bojko from The Japan Times, "Of course an electic lineup such as this requires strong direction and, this time around, the whip comes from guest conductor Butch Morris. His style of conducting is not to lead a group through a written score, but to react to the ongoing group improvisation and pulls what he feels are the right sounds and elements out of the musicians. His touch ranges from gentle string interludes that organically meld into fractured ambient washes to deep bass grooves and long guitar lines that produce soaring, sustained aches or disturbing subterranean agitations. The music is generally abstract, but there is an element of excitement as its form grows and the pieces sprout new limbs. "The Rites" is Burnt Sugar's fifth album since forming in 1999 and ther are several more on the way. Collect 'em all, kids."

Colin Buttimer of the BBC on the Internet says," Sky Porch arrives in an already altered state. Skipping at speed/suspended in the air. Racing along/all still. Then the tempo gallops forward - that must be Pete Cosey playing a warped Jack Johnson riff. Returned after all these too, too long years. Things get really ripped apart, things get seismic in a trippy, queasy way. After 17 minutes of this, you've got to feel drenched, renched, reconfigured. They finally come to a rest, but you greedily want it to continue."

"As with their live appearance in London recently, there's a leviathan-like sense of a large mass gathering momentum. A sweating, straining, feeling alternative to the non-corporeal floodtide of electronica, Greg Tate's groove-based, improvising, conductioned, yelling, tender, big (massive) band make an unassailable argument for the organic, the electric. Burnt Sugar are a mobile unit, heavy but limber as a panther - seemingly able to tackle any subject at will. The last hundred years is a smorgasbord for this groups delectation; join the feast."

And finally, in Butch Morris's own words,"This was definitely not a man bound to one groove. He understood how to establish order in music, and he understood the indespensable requirement of construction. (We bonded at this level.) Would he of liked this....?

Who knows. He also knew how to realize the present! The bond continues!"

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