What do you do when you've mastered the art of the pop song? If you're the XTC bandleader, you tackle its musical opposite: avant-garde jazz. Partridge's Monstrance project dips into murky sonics and amiable atonality. It's got none of the melodies and much of the soul of his famed rock bunch.
Over a year ago, XTC founder/guitarist Andy Partridge, original XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews and drummer Martyn Barker (longtime bandmate of Barry’s in Shriekback) began to discuss convening as a trio to make improvisational music under the name "Monstrance". These three finally got together to record live for three days amassing nearly eight hours of material which was subsequently sorted and mixed by Future Sound Of London guitarist Stuart Rowe and engineer Merv Carswell yielding Monstrance’s self-titled debut, a two disc set of overdub/edit-free music. The Monstrance album is being released on Partridge’s Ape House label, distributed in the U.S. by Ryko Distribution April 3, 2007.