Michael Intriere is a Los Angeles cellist and composer whose work spans the outer edges of punk, free improvisation, and avant-garde classical music. He co-founded Fat and Fucked Up in the 1980s alongside Josie Roth — a “thrash-classical chamber group” whose membership fluctuated and whose approach to improvisation was as likely to surface in a film projection room as on a stage. The band’s reach extended to collaborators including Brad Laner and Kraig Grady, situating it firmly within LA’s DIY experimental underground.
Intriere is also a founding member of Cello Pudding, an improvising string quartet of three cellos and bass. Vacillating between free jazz and avant-classical, the group moves through written and improvised territory with the sensibility of musicians who came up in punk.
Intriere first appeared on NGR’s Milking the Borg, contributing cello to “If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him.” On this new recording, he returns with a fuller presence — layering multiple cello parts alongside Matt Comeione on shruti box and bowed psaltery, the four instruments finding a common atmosphere somewhere between drone, ritual, and dissonance.
Header photo by Michael Dressel