Bitterviper is the brand-new quartet of Nikos Veliotis (cello), Taku Unami (synthesizer), Sarah Hennies (percussion), and David Grubbs (guitar, piano), four individuals who separately are responsible for some of the most striking and wildly idiosyncratic music of the past couple of decades—not to mention the duo collaborations between Grubbs and Unami (the albums Comet Meta and Failed Celestial Creatures) and Veliotis and Grubbs (The Harmless Dust). Their self-titled debut album, Bitterviper, is out July 25th on Blue Chopsticks.

Athens-based Nikos Veliotis set Bitterviper into motion with four overdubbed pieces of dense psychoacoustic marvels on the cello; Grubbs responded with characteristically subtle tracery on piano, guitar, and lap steel; Unami weighed in electronically from Tokyo to mysteriously thicken both the plot and the low end; and Hennies applied her compositional gifts to structure the whole thing with an Occam’s Razor approach to percussion. But once you drop the needle on Bitterviper, its origin story becomes ancient history; you’re suddenly in the presence of an ensemble that sounds like no other and for whom there are no false steps. Lead single "Bird of Prey Beaten Back" is out now on all streaming services.

It’s all fair game when this is how you choose to play; Bitterviper is a salvo of confidence and conviction, and this is only the beginning.