Kingdom of Jones
New York composer and guitarist Cristian Amigo named his “new music jam band”, Kingdom of Jones, after another bastion of fierce cultural resistance. During the American Civil War, confederates dubbed the city of Ellisville, Mississippi – an anti-secessionist Union stronghold in the midst of the Confederacy – the “Free and Sovereign State of Jones.”
Amigo’s kingdom reflects his position on what it takes to exist in a complicated, global world of sonic possibilities. Its wide-ranging sound world moves between the softest ambient acoustic gestures, and the heaviest kinds of industrial and electric sounds. The result is no musically-beleaguered enclave: rather it offers listeners many points of entry into its global amalgam.
Amigo is an acoustic and electric guitarist with an open improvising bent, and an eclectic composer of theatre and performance works, orchestral and chamber music, fierce riffs, and art song. This, the first Kingdom of Jones CD, was recorded and assembled while traveling during his Guggenheim Fellowship year (2006-2007) and is a vehicle for exploration of the avant-populist music in his head, heart, and hands. Cristian Amigo and Kingdom of Jones (KOJ) are an ensemble whose core players include Amigo (guitars, electronics, voice), Izzi Ramkissoon (bass, laptop, processes) and Guillermo Cardenas (percussion and trance). Playing live sets of amplified LOUD music, they rock the place down with experimental, often abstract, music and beats, soundscapes, and electronic processes. In live performance, the band remixes and fragments all types of music (Messiaen, Golijov, Perez Prado, Nino Rota, Bob Marley, Fela, Led Zeppelin, Cypress Hill, rumba, etc.), and recasts them mixed with Kingdom of Jones sounds and original compositions.
