Ches Smith’s Clone Row

“This definitely ain’t your father’s guitar band,” writes no less an expert on six-string subversion than Marc Ribot in the liner notes to the self-titled debut by Ches Smith’s latest project, Clone Row. The adventurous new quartet features Smith with guitarists Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman and bassist Nick Dunston. As a composer, Smith finds endless possibilities in this seemingly limited instrumentation, weaving together varied threads from his divergent earlier projects in ways that sound not quite like any of them.

Writing for All About Jazz, Glenn Astarita calls Clone Row “a statement of intent from an artist still hungry to redraw the boundaries of progressive jazz. Essential listening for anyone curious about where creative music is headed in 2025, it delivers both the thrill of exploration and the satisfaction of landing somewhere entirely new.” This latest evolution in Smith’s imaginative soundworld was deliberately devised to spotlight four composer-improvisers who could transform and evolve the composer’s tantalizing musical instigations.