photos by Shawn Lucas
Exploratory subterranean music source Avant Music News presents an exclusive stream of Parallax, the debut from avant drone/jazz duo MADAM ORANGE, ahead of its release this Friday on Amalgam.
MADAM ORANGE unites Chicago-based musicians Emily Rach Beisel and Bill Harris. Both formidable solo artists, Emily Rach Beisel (bass clarinet, electronics) and Bill Harris (drums, electronics) combine their respective sonic worlds into MADAM ORANGE, a project that often sounds like far more than two people playing, pushing toward the outer limits of heavy improvisation, rhythmic interlock, amplification, and feedback. Their music moves fluidly between dense, aggressive intensity and spacious, highly sensitive textures, driven by a near-telepathic musical connection and a shared interest in extending acoustic instruments through electronics. Having toured throughout the Midwest, East Coast, and Canada, including Midwest tours in 2024 and East Coast and Canadian tours in 2023, the duo is now on the verge of delivering their recorded debut, Parallax.
Through eleven unhinged but focused movements combining free-range and non-compliant techniques, MADAM ORANGE’s Parallax is the candid rock purist’s worst nightmare yet offers the adventurous spelunkers of the musical world’s most exterior realms a vast expanse of uncharted chasms and corridors in which to venture, and perhaps not return. Theatrical and ethereal woodwind tactics delivered via subtly employed electronic manipulations and vast outboard effects, lightly-grinding/unconventional percussive and rhythmic flow, and an overall sense of auditor boundary-testing coalesce and writhe like an alien ecosystem living in the cracks of reality.
Half of the songs on were recorded live at the Hungry Brain and the rest of the album was recorded at Marmalade, all by Bill Harris, who also operates the Amalgam label. Emily Rach Beisel and Bill Harris created the album’s cover art and mixed the audio which was then mastered by Edward Hamel. MADAME ORANGE’s output should capture your attention if Nurse With Wound, Zu, Alice Coltrane, Boredoms, John Zorn, Secret Chiefs Three, Ruins, Peter Brötzmann, Muslimgauze, Skullflower, and Ornette Coleman permeate your listening habits.
The band reveals, “Blending heavy sound worlds with improvisation can sometimes be tricky. We feel this record is true to walking that line. Over the years we have developed a unique language together that allows us to move deftly between composed and improvised material.”
Listen to MADAM ORANGE’s captivating Parallax early on Avant Music News at THIS LOCATION.
Parallax will be released on CD and digitally this Friday, October 23rd. Find preorders HERE, and watch the performance videos of “Rilles” HERE and “Apogee” HERE.
Following their hometown release show for Parallax on October 18th, MADAM ORANGE is booking new tour dates for the Winter and Spring months.
The duo reveals, “We are currently writing more structured tunes, and the future will see us combining this with the doom and noise-based language heard on Parallax. We are planning a spring 2027 tour featuring this new material. More to come!”
“…there’s a cinematic quality to ‘Mare Crisium’ that creates a great tension between the sprawling, chaotic interplay between Beisel and Harris and the building sense of dread from the background droning.” – Everything Is Noise
“…a heavy experimental album by MADAM ORANGE, a new duo by a power couple from the local improvised-music scene: bass clarinetist Emily Rach Beisel and drummer Bill Harris, who both augment their instruments with electronics.” – Chicago Reader
“…as an active listening experience, it’s unpredictable and thrilling… I’ve been enthralled with what the duo is doing since the first single dropped a couple months ago. If you’re the type of person that’s comfortable with music that colors far outside the lines and feels that music doesn’t need to feature distorted electric guitars to be considered heavy, then MADAM ORANGE is for you. The songs on Parallax are vital and alive in ways that most conventional music simply cannot match.” – Both Kinds Of Heavy
“I like the way they allow each other space, that they work so well together, that it does feel like a solo album as they mover as one thing towards the outer limits of heavy improvisation, rhythmic interlock, amplification, and now and again a tasty bit of rather deliciously colourful feedback. It is dense, it is heavy, down at the bass end of things, it is intense, it is fluid, it is instrumental, spontaneous, telepathic, it isn’t an onslaught, far too sophisticated for that, far too crafted, beautifully so. Eleven colourfully focused movements combining ‘free-range and non-compliant techniques.’ A sense of the ethereal here and there, some almost haunting woodwind, subtle, hints of never too obvious electronic manipulation and well, all is well…” – The Organ
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