Trippers & Askers

"The music of Trippers and Askers deftly evades easy comparisons. This has been true since my friend Jay Hammond named his collective of musical collaborators when living in Brooklyn in 2008, but it has never been truer than on Acorn, his new album, which contains the group’s finest recording and songwriting to date. Hammond’s melodies and playing subtly draw on folk traditions from all over the world, sounding more like synthesis than fusion. His lyrics are often in sharper focus on this record than in previous work, and are evocative of the strangeness and turbulence of these times, but full of a sense of hard-earned wonder. Unlike most folk music (at least in its strictest definition), the care and attention paid to crafting entire worlds of recorded sound feels vital to the heart of this music." -Will Stratton

"Octavia Butler's immersive and frighteningly prescient work has been the source material from art ranging from opera to graphic novels and have inspired countless writers. Jay Hammond's folk / spiritual jazz project Trippers & Askers is similarly touched by Butler's dystopian but eerily familiar world explored in her books Parable of the Sower. As an intertextual work Hammond brings together a wide array of collaborators that include members of Wye Oak, Califone and former Sun Ra member Ken Moshesh to explore the book's narrative as it pertains to the very real political and emotional challenges of the present." -Ryan Hall