Spirit Assembly is the experimental and improvisational duo of multi-instrumentalists Riley and Sean Hoss. We met through our high school marching band and became close friends in our senior year. Along with this friendship, we found a mutual interest in taking a creative leap away from the rigid musical structure of our school ensembles. We began jamming after classes, with Sean on saxophone, Riley switching between saxophone and flute, and the third party of a jazz backing track. This naturally continued into college as we both chose to pursue an education and a career in music. As the setting of our jams morphed from a hot garage to a university practice room (and later returning to our roots in that same fluorescently lit garage), so did our intentions. We developed an almost frightening musical and personal telepathy between each other, as well as a deep passion for radical and avant-garde approaches to art. Accordingly, we decided to finally start turning our jams into an official musical project. 

We started by ditching the backing tracks and instead improvising interpretations and deconstructions of well-known jazz standards. Due to our mutual interest in free jazz and our unorthodox instrumentation of two woodwinds accompanied by nothing, these improvisations would stray far from the conventions of the original tunes. But they’d be constructed in a way that worshipped the source material, as we’d study and meditate on the core essence of its melody and form. This stage of our process laid many important foundations for us, but our first major breakthrough was born of a change in instrumentation, as Sean switched to piano, and Riley chose to stick mostly to flute over saxophone. We found even more freedom in this medium, largely due to the harmonic capabilities of the piano. We also began extensive sonic experimentation. Riley applied a unique and personal set of extended techniques to a pedalboard setup, and Sean began to tamper with the strings and metal inside the piano. Our approach to improvisation developed as well, as while we kept reimagining jazz standards, we also started doing “prompt improvisations,” where we’d create improvisations rooted in ideas, emotions, events, or personal experiences. This brought us to a swift first release, a continuous improvisation entitled Metamorphosis, and now to the prospect of our first LP To Nowhere I Remember.