Space Denial begins with a paradox: two wind instruments generating a mass so dense that air seems to have been eliminated from the room. Jon Lorenz’s saxophone and John Rich’s clarinet are amplified through contact microphones placed inside the horns, then driven through loud amplifiers until breath, reed vibration, feedback and distortion collapse into one continuous physical event. The title does not suggest outer space. It describes the music’s refusal to leave any open area around the listener. Every available surface is occupied by pressure.
“Hollow Gathering” fills the first side with eighteen minutes of sustained confrontation. At first the sound can resemble anonymous electronics: a thick low drone, grainy upper-frequency abrasion and unstable tones moving against one another. Gradually, the bodily origin becomes apparent. Behind the distortion are lungs emptying, teeth pressing against reeds, fingers striking keys and two players adjusting their pitches in response to the amplifier system. The music is not made by sending polite instrumental lines through an effects chain. Lorenz and Rich push their horns until the acoustic source and amplified result become inseparable.
That distinction matters because Wasteland Jazz Unit’s setup was deliberately simple. Despite descriptions of their work as “reed electronic manipulation,” the duo avoided elaborate pedals. The contact microphones and amplifier distortion supplied nearly everything. Lorenz argued that interesting sound needed to exist before processing and that excessive effects could distract from the act of producing it. Space Denial proves the point. Its enormous apparent complexity grows from a narrow system: two reeds, two bodies, amplification, feedback and the changing acoustics created when all of them interact at extreme volume.
The record’s harshness is therefore not a layer applied afterward. It is built into the performance. When Lorenz overblows the saxophone, the microphone catches more than the intended pitch. Air turbulence, key noise and reed chatter become electrical information, and the amplifier enlarges these normally incidental sounds until they rival the horn’s fundamental tone. Rich’s clarinet contributes a narrower, more penetrating band of frequencies capable of slicing through the saxophone’s broader roar. Their sounds collide, create beating patterns and produce phantom tones that neither player seems to be performing alone.
“Hollow Gathering” does not develop like a free-jazz solo in which one musician advances an idea while the other responds. The duo builds a shared object. One sustained tone thickens another; a shriek tears open the drone; a low vibration destabilizes the apparent center; feedback begins behaving like a third player. Short gestures remain audible, but they are quickly absorbed into the accumulated mass. The title captures this process beautifully. The gathering is crowded yet hollow, a congregation formed entirely around an empty center that the sound continually attempts to crush.
Wasteland Jazz Unit’s name encourages the listener to search for jazz references, but Lorenz and Rich treated that association with suspicion. Lorenz had no formal saxophone training, while Rich’s clarinet experience extended back to school band. Their crucial model was not academic technique but the liberating violence of records such as Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun, combined with the amplified reed destruction of Borbetomagus. This lack of conservatory discipline is not a deficiency hidden by volume. It allows the duo to approach the instruments as machines for converting physical effort into unstable sound.
The second side combines “Attain,” “Jaws” and “Nuzzled” into one seventeen-minute sequence. The three titles imply different relationships to pressure: reaching toward something, being caught between teeth and finally being pressed into intimate contact. The music moves through comparable states without drawing clean borders between them. More exposed horn cries emerge from the distortion, then sink back into low churning resonance. Certain passages contract into a focused frequency before widening into full-band overload. The side feels less like three separate compositions than three names assigned to stages within one prolonged bodily struggle.
“Attain” suggests upward motion, and the playing repeatedly climbs toward pitches that seem to exceed the instruments’ stable registers. Notes split into multiphonics; breath becomes scream; distortion converts a wavering line into a radiant sheet of sound. Yet every apparent summit immediately creates another level of pressure. There is no victorious arrival. The duo’s achievement lies in maintaining the climb after the ordinary musical reasons for doing so have disappeared.
“Jaws” makes the record’s relationship to the mouth impossible to ignore. Reed instruments begin at a place where teeth, tongue, saliva and breath control a small vibrating strip of material. Wasteland Jazz Unit magnifies that hidden mechanics. Biting the reed changes the pitch and introduces strained, pinched tones; pushing too much air produces rupture rather than purity. Through amplification, the listener is placed impossibly close to the players’ mouths while simultaneously being hit by sound large enough to feel architectural. The result is both intimate and monumental.
“Nuzzled” is an unexpectedly tender word for such abrasive music. It suggests the closeness between the two performers as they work inside the same hostile field. Their improvisation is not simply a competition to become louder or more extreme. Each must listen closely enough to recognize where the other’s frequency is moving, when to reinforce it and when to force the combined sound into another shape. What appears from outside as chaos depends upon concentration. The warmth in the title also reflects the musicians’ own resistance to treating their work as purely negative. Rich described the music as joyful; Lorenz wanted audiences to feel the hands striking keys and teeth vibrating against reeds.
Space Denial was the Cincinnati duo’s first full-length statement after a series of small releases and collaborations. Lorenz and Rich were also deeply involved in their city’s experimental culture through the Art Damage Lodge, a former Masonic building they helped operate, and the long-running Art Damage radio program. That local context matters. The record did not emerge from an isolated studio experiment designed for the noise market. It came from a functioning performance community in which unusual sound, DIY organization and physically intense concerts were parts of the same activity.
The original Nashazphone LP was pressed in an edition of only 190 copies. Its two-side structure is ideal for the material. Each performance receives enough time to establish a complete acoustic environment, while the act of turning the record provides the only decisive silence. On digital versions, the second side’s three titles are joined as a single track, preserving their continuity rather than pretending that this music contains conventional songs. The format recognizes that duration is one of the duo’s instruments. Extreme volume becomes more than a shock when it is sustained long enough for the ear to begin mapping its interior.
Comparisons to Borbetomagus are unavoidable, but Space Denial possesses its own stripped-down character. Without Donald Miller’s guitar or a third reed player, Wasteland Jazz Unit produces a leaner confrontation. The absence of percussion prevents the noise from settling into pulse, while the lack of pedals keeps its transformations tied to breath and feedback. Even at maximum density, there is a direct line from muscular action to audible result. One can hear the duo discovering what happens when a slight shift in embouchure enters an amplifier already near collapse.
Space Denial is punishing, but punishment is not its final purpose. The album uses intensity to make ordinarily hidden aspects of instrumental performance perceptible. Breath becomes pressure, contact becomes electricity, a reed becomes a noise generator and two horns become an environment without edges. Lorenz and Rich do not decorate free jazz with distortion or imitate harsh noise using saxophone and clarinet. They locate the point where those categories cease to matter. The record denies space so completely that, inside its crowded roar, an entirely new space begins to form.
