Origin Houston, Texas, USA Website freerads.com Albums The Freedom Fence | Years active 1996–present Record label Free Radicals | |
Genres Funk, Ska, Klezmer, World music Members Nick Cooper, Phil K, Ivan Gough, Chris Speed, Andy Page Profiles | ||
Free Radicals is an American jazz, funk, hip-hop, avant-garde, ska, reggae, African music, Indian music, punk, klezmer, polka and latin jazz group based in Houston, Texas.
Contents
History
Free Radicals' live band includes six or seven members. On recordings — The Rising Tide Sinks All (1998), Our Lady of Eternal Sunny Delights (2000), Aerial Bombardment (2004), and The Freedom Fence (2012) — Free Radicals invites a group of 50 or more musicians and vocalists into the studio.
Drummer Nick Cooper founded the group in 1996, with a goal of specializing in improvised music. In 2000, The New Yorker wrote "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." In 2010, Dawn wrote that the artwork and message about underwater oil-leaks, oil-wars, and bank-crashes on the band's first CD was like a "premonition waiting to become true.". Free Radicals frequent collaborators and guest musicians include Al Pagliuso, Dan Cooper, Harry Sheppard, Gloria Edwards, Nelson Mills III, and Subhendu Chakraborty.
Free Radicals performs many concerts, marches and fund-raisers for anti-authoritarian and radical groups like food not bombs, peace festivals, and charities events including a continuous 24-hour concert in November 1999 to raise money for Kid Care, a health program for children. They have protested against Halliburton, and participated in marches for immigrants' rights and for a Houston janitor's union.
Free Radicals has won the following 20 Houston Press awards:
Discography
Songs
Ben Taub Blues2012
Every Wall2012
Third Ward Not for Sale2012