U.S. Maple’s Todd Rittman in D. Rider

U.S. Maple is an acquired taste, but well worth acquiring if you like medium difficult, abstract dissonance, played in rock instruments but really more like really loud free jazz. Todd Rittman has since gone on to Singer and now D. Rider, which I reviewed in today’s Dusted. Here’s a bit:
It’s a bleak, blasted world, this latest project from U.S .Maple’s Todd Rittman. Barb-studded basslines traverse chaotic saxophone and guitar. Exhausted, whispered voices trace post-apocalyptic images of war, environmental collapse and failed human connection. Like U.S. Maple, D. Rider builds abstract geometries of harsh, colliding sounds. Yet unlike that band – and more like Rittman’s 2007 project, Singer – vocals have been tuned and tamed, words clear enough to unspool lurid wasteland imagery. Notes coalesce into soul-falsetto trills and flourishes.

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He also wrote us a Listed, which is pretty interesting, too.


Nothing on D. Rider, but check out this video of US Maple. Embedding has disabled by request, but if you click on it, it’s linked to a bunch of other US Maple videos from a documentary by Tony Ciarrocchi.