Sunwatchers

Drawing from Terry Riley alongside Ethiopian and Thai traditions and the farthest edges of jazz, the New York City ensemble Sunwatchers unleashes a forceful, dense strain of mystical free rock. The outfit traces its origins to Athens, Georgia’s raucous Dark Meat collective, rapidly embedding itself within New York’s experimental circles and issuing material through adventurous independent imprints including Castle Face and Trouble in Mind. Their electrified vitality reached peak expression on the third album, Illegal Moves from 2019, before they pressed further into radical new territories on the 2023 release Music Is Victory Over Time.

At the core of Sunwatchers stands Jim McHugh on guitar and electric phin, joined by alto saxophonist Jeff Tobias, bassist Peter Kerlin, percussionist Cory Bracken, and drummer Jason Robira. Additional contributors encompass McHugh’s spouse Katie Eastburn, previously of Young People, guitarist and keyboardist Dave Harrington, formerly of DARKSIDE, guitarist Ben Greenberg, keyboard player Dave Kadden, and fiddle player Jonah Rapino. Originally hailing from North Carolina, McHugh first gained recognition as a co-founder of the freewheeling, improvisational Athens group Dark Meat, later relocating to New York City and immersing himself in its experimental music milieu; there he established the noted psychedelic rock outfit Nymph, collaborated with free jazz pioneer Arthur Doyle, and pursued solo performances and sound installations.

Sunwatchers began coalescing by 2013, appearing at new music festivals and intimate New York venues, with the self-released cassette Tomb Howl emerging in late 2014. Their self-titled debut album surfaced on Castle Face in March 2016, after which they shifted to Trouble in Mind for the follow-up II, issued in early 2018. Later that year Amish Records put out the double-LP collaboration 3 Characters alongside Eugene Chadbourne. The 2019 album Illegal Moves represented their most combustible statement yet, featuring a rendition of Alice Coltrane’s “Ptah, the El Daoud” amid its wide-ranging original pieces. HausLive 1, capturing a performance at Chicago’s Cafe Mustache, arrived on Hausu Mountain in September 2019. Following extensive international touring, the band swiftly delivered the fourth album Oh Yeah? in spring 2020.

For the subsequent project, Sunwatchers partnered with Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer soon after he launched Discount Mirrors studio in Los Angeles. Issued in November 2023, the fifth album Music Is Victory Over Time further extended their reach through tracks invoking the spiritual depth of free jazz, the cosmic cycles of Krautrock, and the impassioned drive of revolutionary political thought.