For the past few years, avant-jazz legend Nels Cline (Wilco, Thurston Moore, The Geraldine Fibbers) and omnipresent beat freak Zach Hill (Hella, The Ladies, Team Sleep) have been waiting for an opportunity to spend a few hours making noise. When Cline joined Wilco full-time and Hill started The Ladies with Pinback's Rob Crow, the dream seemed increasingly unlikely. And by the time Hill's full-time gig as half of Hella saw him touring arenas with modern rock staples like System of a Down, the dream seemed dead. But through a bit of careful planning and a whole lot of serendipity, Wilco had a day off in Chicago the same day that Hill was in town. It was the night of the 2004 presidential election, and nobody in the room was happy. Tensions flared, confusion set in, and brains started to freeze. Cline and Hill decided that the following day would be their day of release: half collaboration, half exorcism. Matt Zivich (live sound engineer for Wilco) and Jonathan Hischke (touring bassist for Hella) were brought in to mingle in the madness. Recorded and mixed in one day at Semaphore Studios in Chicago, IL, the four pieces on Distressed are entirely improvised, with a little post-production editing courtesy of Cline's former Geraldine Fibbers partner, Carla Bozulich. Sitting somewhere between the most abstract freak-outs of Wilco's more recent material and the looser, more minimalist moments of Hella, Damsel exhibits a surprising amount of control over its chaos. The four extended pieces (the shortest being nearly seven minutes) run the gamut from serene electroacoustic ambience to unhinged, cathartic squall. It is not the sound of losing control so much as it is trusting in an intangible force.