Cadence Magazine, Fall 2013
Review: Ken Aldcroft’s Convergence Ensemble "Sneaky Pete-Slugs'" (TRP-015)
By: Dustin Mallory

242 East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C in New York City: Slugs’ Saloon. Just down the street from The Chicken Shack… fabled as “a dark funky little place,”… the location of Lee Morgan’s tragic final performance… home of Sun Ra’s regular Monday night performances of the late 1960s… an inspiration for all musicians in the avant-garde. Aldcroft is searching. His sextet has found astro-infinity music. They are on a mission rife with discovery and expansion. >From 5626 Morton Street in Philadelphia, to the East Village in New York City, to the outer boundaries of space’s infinite polarity: the course has been set but the coordinates are variable. Sun Ra is guiding the voyage from the great beyond. Tones, colors, and contours drench the hushed stillness’s rivalry with spacey anxiety. Then, chaos ensues.

The format of the ensemble appears in combinations of solo, duo, trio, quartet, quintet, and the full sextet to establish the possibilities of freedom music. This double-disc release contains endemic motivation that often sounds fresh and never sounds ostentatious. Aldcroft leads with his vigorous guitar at the helm of the ship. His esoteric style is earning him a place among the instrument’s most innovative performers. The take-away from this experience is wrapped in a series of fleeting emotions. The word “ascertaining” describes the journey of the Convergence Ensemble. Their work continues to move closer to the light, but they are far from arrival. But isn’t it all about the journey anyway? Dig?