Who on earth—if he’s even from this earth—is Thollem? I’ll clue you in: Thollem is the ultimate enigma, a hardcore iconoclast and true original, in the musical, spiritual and other sense. A style-deconstructing sound explorer who has feverishly gone against the grain throughout his career as far as “genre” is concerned. Jazz? Experimental? New Music? Noise? Classical Contemporary? Drone? Improvised Music? It’s none of the above and all of the above—usually at the same time.

Not only is pegging Thollem into the obligatory stylistic box an exercise in futility—but a good exercise at that—it’s his unique persona and “the company he keeps” that help define his esthetic. His long list of collaborators, you ask? They are culled from across every spectrum and are his genre-obliterating kindred spirits. To name a smattering: the late great minimalist pioneer Pauline Oliveros, Wilco’s Nels Cline, Jad Fair of outsider legends Half Japanese, the trailblazing composer and bassist William Parker, Sara Lund of post-hardcore heroes Unwound, Minutemen bassist and punk rock overlord Mike Watt, Thollem’s life and creative partner ACVilla (who provided the artwork for all the album covers). His jaw-dropping list of collaborators goes on and on.

Like the clenched-fisted ethos that Watt has lived and breathed by, Thollem abides, too. Master improviser, shamanistic mysterioso, road warrior, crooning art-pop tunesmith, bluesman, activist, writer, collaborator and more. I’ve written that Thollem is an improbable cross between Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and Andy Kaufman, his superhuman hand-work a glorious maelstrom of mind-bendingly poetic and spray-painted notes that transport everyone and anyone to unexplored sonic realms. It’s both serious as a heart attack (props to the Minutemen there) and loose as all limbed heft that he unleashes.

Which brings us to the present and arguably to his apotheosis—at least for now. The ever-freewheeling and free-swinging maestro’s so fittingly titled and so fitting new venture that is so cut from his very own cloth arrives with the perfect title in partnership with the equally adventurous Austin label Astral Spirits: Thollem’s Astral Traveling Sessions.

Like Thollem’s sound and vision unto itself, it’s BIG. A 12-month, 25-album series of recordings of Thollem caught on tape in collaboration with 70 different musicians over the course of his extensive touring schedule in 2019. It’s a sublime, ongoing document of Thollem’s singularly creative reach and the invaluable alliances across the globe of which he’s formed with his fellow avant-garde peers.

Released to date are duo sets with Tatsuya Nakatani, Christos Yermenoglou, Raven Chacon, John Dieterich and Carmina Escobar and quartet dates with Michael Wimberly/William Parker/Nels Cline, Peter Valsamis/Orlando Greenhill/Jacqueline Kim as well as Alessandro Librio/Eva Geraci/Lelio Giannetto (who sadly passed away from complications due to COVID-19 on December 19, 2020).

What you’re gripping now (or reading digitally) is the newest installment of Thollem’s Astral Traveling Sessions: an epic double album sprawl. It features two remarkable and very disparate sets: a single 40-minute collaboration that finds Thollem alongside the mighty drummer and composer Alex Cline (recorded at the Santa Monica Library in the MLK, Jr. Auditorium as part of the Soundwaves Series run by Jeff Schwartz) followed by a spiritually illuminating outing with pedal steel guitar extraordinaire, Susan Alcorn, captured at her home in Baltimore. A DEEP double bill of clinking, clattering and bangin’ free jazz ecstasy and space-age twang from the cosmos.

Thollem is the Astral Traveling Man, riding the cosmic planes with his musical soulmates in forward-looking sound and his Astral Traveling Sessions are the ultimate testament to his perpetually heady quest. Hop on.—Brad Cohan, Brooklyn, N.Y., December, 2020