Since the 90s, percussionist Tim Barnes has collaborated with a range of talents in the indie rock, improvised & experimental music scenes. Diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in 2021, Tim and close friend Ken (Bundy) Brown (Tortoise, Pullman) engaged in a series of sessions with peers including Oren Ambarchi, Robert Carlos Lange, Douglas McCombs, Rob Mazurek, Jim O’Rourke, Chad Taylor, and Thollem, tapping Tim’s inexhaustible rhythmic energy.

Noumena is the second volume of music capturing percussionist Tim Barnes in a variety of collaborative settings recorded in extraordinary circumstances over the past few years.

Tim is a storied drummer, engineer and producer whose CV encompasses collaborations with a who’s who of late 20th and early 21st century music. He has recorded, performed and collaborated with countless artists, including Tony Conrad, Faust, Alan Licht, Jim O’Rourke, PG Six, Silver Jews, Sonic Youth, Stereolab, The Tower Recordings, Ken Vandermark, Wilco, John Zorn and many others. Through 2014, he was the proprietor of the boutique Quakebasket label, which documented a variety of projects at the forward edge of improvised and experimental music, including Tim’s duo with Glenn Kotche, On Fillmore. Now, Quakebasket has been revived to issue Noumena and its companion album, Lost Words.

In 2021, Tim was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 54, and he and his family went public with this immediately. The response from Tim’s network of friends and musical peers was overwhelming, and, beginning in late 2021, collaborative recordings were undertaken, coordinated and assembled by Tim’s longtime friend Ken (Bundy) Brown, with whom Tim had worked in the past as a member of the group Pullman, early pioneers of the new Americana movement in the indie scene of the late 90s.

The recordings for Noumena feature the playing of Joshua Abrams, Oren Ambarchi, Ken Brown, John Dieterich, Darin Gray, Glenn Kotche, Robert Carlos Lange, Ro(b)//ert Lundberg, Douglas McCombs,, Matt Mehlan, Rob Mazurek, Tara Jane O’Neil Jim O’Rourke, Chad Taylor, Thollem, Britt Walford and Mike Watt. As with Lost Words, Noumena cuts a dramatic swath through a sweep of music styles, all of which are deepened by Tim’s versatile, intensely stimulated percussive feel.

A1. Tim Barnes With Darin Gray , Glenn Kotche , Rob Mazurek And Jim O'Rourke - (Dis)place(d)
A2. Tim Barnes With Oren Ambarchi - ECM Test
A3. Tim Barnes With John Dieterich, Thollem McDonas And Mike Watt - Skidding
A4. Tim Barnes With Bundy K. Brown And Douglas McCombs - Cheat Codes
A5. Tim Barnes With John Dieterich, Rob Lundberg And Matt Mehlan - Coventry West
B1. Tim Barnes With Joshua Abrams , Roberto Carlos Lange And Chad Taylor - Day Goes All The Time
B2. Tim Barnes With John Dieterich, Thollem McDonas And Mike Watt - In The Moment
B3. Tim Barnes With Bundy K. Brown - Deashi
B4. Tim Barnes With Tara Jane O'Neil - Somebody's Birthday