Dodecahedron by The Rempis/Daisy Duo & Guests

"Dodecahedron is the pair's third duo recording, and it follows Second Spring (Aerophonic, 2014) and Back To The Circle (Okka, 2005). Both discs are taken from live performances. Disc one is made up of three duets between Rempis and Daisy, while disc two adds a third guest on each of its nine tracks." -Mark Corroto, All About Jazz
—

Dodecahedron, the third duo recording by saxophonist Dave Rempis and percussionist Tim Daisy, celebrates a special mile-marker in the musical history of these long-time partners, as 2018 marks the twentieth anniversary of their duo pairing. These two have formed the backbone of well-known working bands dating back to 1997, when they first met in Chicago, including Triage, The Vandermark Five, The Rempis Percussion Quartet, and The Engines. But that list only scratches the surface, accounting for just a portion of likely more than a thousand gigs they’ve played together over that time. On the first disc of this new two-disc set, recorded live at Elastic Arts in Chicago in October 2017, you can hear every nuance of that two decades of shared experience. Rempis and Daisy have logged far too many hours in the van together to suffer each other’s bullshit, and continue to undermine any whiff of cliché by pushing here, pulling there, and sometimes just outright kicking the chair out from underneath one another. There’s no hiding from family.

To further celebrate this special milestone, the duo invited six guests to join them individually for two recording sessions in the summer of 2017, released here on the second disc in this set. Each of these musicians – Jason Adasiewicz, Jim Baker, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Steve Swell, Katie Young, and Aaron Zarzutzki – are friends and colleagues whose distinct personalities and long histories with Rempis and Daisy have helped to shape the duo’s approach as a unit, and as individual musicians. And each of the pieces presented here showcase yet another of the many facets contained within the duo’s complex lexicon.

Overall, the music on these two discs stands as a testament to improvisation as process, and as development; in this case an ongoing conversation that takes place across decades, not a finished product contained within a single document. Viewed within the larger context of Rempis and Daisy’s long history together, these discs find two improvisers once again rolling up their sleeves and showing up ready for work in the type of humble, patient, and committed way that’s come to define their hometown scene in Chicago musically and otherwise.