Find Letter X is one of three albums released by composer and drummer Kate Gentile via various collaborative projects this year. Itself a triple album, the Pi Recordings release features Gentile’s longstanding quartet, which includes pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Kim Cass and reedist Jeremy Viner.

“I have a love of death metal and brutal prog, and I had been trying to think of how I wanted to synthesize it, because there’s so many fusion things that don’t really work well for me,” states Gentile, explaining some of the impetus behind Find Letter X to Stewart Smith in The Wire 476. “So my thought was taking the way that metal drummers deal with certain material. What if I apply that to the kind of rhythms and harmonies I normally write, and it results in some weird stuff that I haven’t really heard metal drummers do? Like playing blast beats, but in odd groupings? You’re so used to your feet working in groups of two and four and being even, but what if you have 11? It feels like very unmined territory that I wanted to deal with.”

Here Gentile shares a track from the second disc of the album, which she describes as the most contrasting. “At the centre of “Raze” is a gauntlet for the band,” she explains over email, “preceded by an initial thematic salvo and followed by a series of episodes including a volcanic free-for-all explosion, a quizzical drone, and a final destructive drum solo.

“As the title implies, there’s an unrelenting, burn-it-to-the-ground feeling, which extends through the whole first portion of disc two of this triple album. It plays an important role in the overall arc of the three discs.”

Read Stewart Smith’s interview with Gentile in full inside The Wire 476. Wire subscribers can also read the interview online via the digital library. Find Letter X is released 13 October.