Thor & Friends

Polymath percussionist and instrument maker Thor Harris launched Thor & Friends during the fall of 2015, following a five-year stretch spent drumming for the avant-rock collective Swans. Three musicians anchor the project—Harris alongside Peggy Ghorbani and Sarah “Goat” Gautier—while additional players join or depart according to the demands of each composition or improvisation. The resulting palette of timbres therefore shifts with every change in personnel, allowing the group to function as a purely acoustic trio, an electronically enhanced unit, or an expanded large ensemble. Most of the musicians who cycle through the lineup hail from the Austin scene.

Thor & Friends draws foundational inspiration from American minimalists such as Terry Riley and Steve Reich, yet the music equally reflects the exploratory approaches of Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Moondog, and Australia’s the Necks. At its center lies a polyrhythmic framework generated by mallet percussion—chiefly marimba, xylophone, and vibraphone—around which processed pedal steel, analog synthesizers, violin, viola, stand-up bass, clarinet, duduk, oboe, and assorted handmade instruments weave constantly changing lines. These sonic traits also echo Harris’s earlier work and ongoing partnerships with Ben Frost, Bill Callahan, Hospital Ships, Shearwater, and John Congelton.

LM Dupli-cation released the ensemble’s self-titled debut in the fall of 2016. Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost of A Hawk & A Hacksaw, together with Deerhoof’s John Dieterich, recorded the album in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After regional dates across the Southwest, an expanded configuration carried the material nationwide amid widespread critical acclaim. The follow-up, The Subversive Nature of Kindness, appeared in December 2017; once again tracked in Albuquerque, it was produced by Barnes and co-engineered by Dieterich.