Artist description "The horn-heavy, continually evolving collective Free Radicals produces a wildly eclectic fusion that has as many influences as there are items in the Houston, Texas, pawnshop in which they honed their sound during all-night jam sessions" --The New Yorker 3/27/2000

Music Style jazz, funk, ska, world

Musical Influences The Alabaster Bastards, The Thin Lipped Skippers, Boys II Mennonites

Similar Artists Coltrane, Mingus, Miles, P-Funk, the JB’s, the Meters, Fela, Medeski Martin and Wood, the Skatalites, The Last Poets, Freestyle Fellowship, Sly and Stevie.

Artist History Free Radicals is (usually) an instrumental horn band featuring unsmooth jazz, anarchist funk and old school ska we're into playing free shows, freeing our minds, free-jazz, freestyle rap and political freedom but we're not into the north american free trade agreement or the huge freeway that runs behind our houses. We have opened for (among others) Sun Ra Arkestra, Rebirth Brass Band and successfuly played a 24 hour concert for charity.

Group Members Nick Cooper, Tom Sutherland, Kent, Theo Bijarro, Andrew, Aaron, Harry Sheppard

Instruments drums, keys, basses, vibes, percussion, horns

Albums The Rising Tide Sinks All (1998), Our Lady of Eternal Sunny Delights (2000)

Press Reviews "If Eric Dolphy, George Clinton and Frank Zappa led a ska band, they might sound something like Houston's Free Radicals. It's a fitting name for a band who are completely unafraid of the inherent risks of bastardizing jazz, ska, funk, rock, rap and world music, yet acutely aware of musicality at all times. The music that results is groove-soaked experimentation. But the liberty Free Radicals take with such a diverse array of musical forms stops well short of avant crap. Free Radicals keep things real by creating some of the most carefully arranged hybrid songs around and keep things fresh with an ever-mutating conglomeration of musicians--some 50 players appear in their most recent release, The Rising Tide Sinks All (Rastaman Work Ethic). No two songs are alike and not a single one can be effectively safety-pinned to the lapel of any genre. The ska-based songs have surf guitar breaks, the free jazz rides a funk wave and lounge swank gets its winking eyeball pierced by double-edged rock guitar--the combinations are endless and so is the pleasure of listening to Free Radicals work their weird magic. Free Radicals are a music writer's dream: with bands as capable and imaginative as this, one doesn't have to be careful with words like "unique." Bands like this embody the very concept." ---Michael Henningsen, 1/7/99, Weekly Alibi, Albuquerque " Not only is Free Radicals the best unsigned band in Houston, it's the most hyped band in town likely to never land a deal. That stigma, however, has nothing to do with quality or proficiency: An ever-mutating, en masse collective, Free Radicals - at one time or another - can boast the participation of no less than 60 of the city's finest and most visionary players, all coming together under the premise of a vast and indefinable fusion. Jazz, hip-hop, rock, ska, soul, experimental noise - Free Radicals don't discriminate; it's music just the same. And if there is a reluctant beacon of sanity in all the improvisational chaos, it's Nick Cooper, whose impassioned political poetry blankets the liner notes of the group's self-released debut CD, The Rising Tide Sinks All Ships, and whose steady hand behind the drum kit often steers the Radicals' on-stage excursions. Live, of course, the band's membership drops to a more manageable number (usually under ten). These guys are good, but they're not contortionists. " 11/23/98, Houston Press "Houston-based Free Radicals includes former members of Sprawl, a band that played OC pretty regularly back in the early 90's and even had a following here. If you were among that following, you should know that Free Radicals are playing a bunch of shows around here after the new year. We'll be there for at least one of them, and so should you because if they're as tasty live as The Rising Tide Sinks All promises, they'll smoke. The Free Radicals hammer out a startlingly superb blend of genre-jumping rythms and riffs that stretch from jazz to funk to ska to R&B to hip-hop to world beat, and back again - sometimes in the same damn song - and they make it all work without any bad, show-offy aftertaste. The Middle Eastern tabla thumping on "Larium Dreams" is exotic and peaceful; the old-school two-tone that pumps up "Home of Easy Credit" sounds like ska being birthed; "Ilalihamani" - the word itself is cool - is haunted by dreamy tribal chants that float above phat, shit-about-to-happen conga hits; song titles like "The School of the Americas," "Elegy for Ken Saro-Wiwa" and "The Capital Punishment Capital" tell us about their politics; and the stream of consciousness Leftie-ish rap that makes up "The Occupation" is only made freakier by the oom-pah-pah tune that blares uncaringly in the back, as seductively rough as the rhymes on "That Ain't No Lamb" are silky and supple. At 74 minutes - not one of them wasted - The Rising Tide Sinks All and the Free Radicals come off sounding as if War, Miles Davis, the Skatalites, Gil Scot-Heron and the Watts Prophets all got together in a studio, fired up some fatties, and jammed till they were sore. When we were blaring this in the Weekly office, some people thought the disc's sloooow jazz/R&B workouts sounded so salacious that they could only be songs from a porno flick. In a way, they're right: Free Radicals guarantee a great fucking Time." Rich Kane, 12/25/98, O.C. Weekly, Orange County, CA

Additional Info power to the people

Location Houston, TX - USA

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