for SEED TRIANGULAR, Robbie Lee & Mary Halvorson
The Wire - “squalling, rumbustious”
New York Times - “a versatile musician with a passion for exhuming old American instruments”
New York Times - “Ms. Halvorson plays a vintage Gibson instrument — the resonance of which makes for an evocative pairing with Mr. Lee’s eight-key Baroque flute”
AllMusic - “…at once provocative and remarkably welcoming. Fans of improvised music will no doubt find much to delight them, but those fascinated by experimental sounds, strange Americana, diverse tonalities, and acoustic music should also be edified.”
Downbeat - “a private sense of transcendentalism”
PopMatters - “Seed Triangular remains fascinating, blending odd tonalities, neo-Renaissance fare, and complex playing.”
Dusted - “This music stands at least as much for the elegance of its construction as it does for the freakiness of the instruments used to make it.”
New York Music Daily - “over-the-top microtonal sax drama”
New Sounds (video, John Schaefer interview)
Nate Chinen (WBGO) - “the album comes rooted in willful discovery”
for CREATURE AUTOMATIC
Tiny Mix Tapes - “With a resume more attuned to pop and avant oddities, it’s mind-expanding how tapped into timeless rock Lee is throughout DCME… When you come to it, be it now or in 20 years, you’ll wonder how the world went so long without hearing it.”
Record Collector - “A key factor in its success is that Lee clearly has songwriting chops to spare”
Talkhouse (Brian Chase) - “The lyrics and orchestration are super clever while maintaining a heavy indie/DIY vibe.”
for OPALESCENCE with Norbert Rodenkirchen and James Ilgenfritz
The Wire - “a striking and creative contribution to the literature of improvised music”
Avant Music News - “a wide-ranging multi-instrumentalist known for improvisational experimental rock.. What unites all three is a fluency in improvisation and a sensitivity to the places their voices take within a unique system of instrumental differences… Altogether, a fine set of music.”
Dusted - “Lines tangle only to twist into perfectly formed knots, and gnarled passages give way to simple, elegant denouements… Ultimately this music stands on its own, stark and rich and utterly compelling.”
Downtown Music Gallery - “a trio of ghost/spirits who are in between the ancient and modern worlds”
for Heresy Of The Free Spirit (with Jozef Van Wissem and Che Chen)
with Che Chen
Chicago Reader - “from gentle explorations of woodwind and string textures to savagely psychedelic blowouts”
Dusted - “there are passages where it sounds like some Hungarian goat herder from the 1760s is playing with some turtlenecked freaks in a 1960s NYC art loft via a time portal held open by vibrantly fluttering magnetic tape. There’s really nothing else around that sounds like this stuff”
The Hum - “A recorded moment which stands as a testament to the fact that there is as much visionary, groundbreaking, and exciting music being made today as any era before”
Paste Magazine - for Ezra Feinberg’s “Kernel & Shell”
Riverfront Times - for “Sleep, Memory”: “characteristic of the dreamworld he's painted here: You don't quite know what it all means, but it's a place to which you immediately want to return.”
AllMusic - for The Howling Hex: https://www.allmusic.com/album/xi-mw0000780541
Impose Magazine - for Seaven Teares
Solo performance at Wels Festival, Austria - “Lee investigated wisely the timbres of the flutes in the acoustically-shaped building, sketching delicate overtones and microtonal ideas coupled with the buzzing sounds electronics boxes, somehow sounding like twisted Indian ragas.”
Pitchfork - for Cass McCombs (“Best New Music”): “…a breathy bass clarinet takes over for the back half, its unique low tones planting many new memories of its own.”