Drummer Tomas Fujiwara has been a fixture on New York’s jazz scene for more than a decade, playing with the likes of Thumbscrew, Matana Roberts and Triple Double. He’s also an adventurous composer who has written most of the compositions on this album, but his drumming is very much in the background – his presence largely textural and ornamental. Instead his incredibly detailed, densely written pieces have been composed to suit the unique talents of his bandmates – the vibraphonist Patricia Brennan and the cellist Tomeka Reid.
Reid, usually playing pizzicato and at the low end of her instrument, often sounds as if she’s playing a double bass, which means that some of this album sounds like a minty-fresh vibes/bass/drums jazz trio. That’s definitely true of the dainty swing of Josho, based around Reid’s melodic walking bassline (like Milt Jackson’s MJQ playing a spy movie soundtrack) and also the creepy, churning, Latin-inflected opener, Solace (like Gary Burton jamming with a no wave band).
But Fujiwara’s compositions move far beyond the jazz realm, nudging into ambient, post-rock and classical territory. On Resolve, Brennan plays discordant voicings on a reverb-laden vibraphone while Reid and Fujiwara make a series of electronic-sounding drones and whistles, using bowed cymbals and forced harmonics to sound like a throbbing power station. Other is a chaotic patchwork of musical fragments thrown together, free improv style. Breath is a wonderfully meditative piece which appears to be written in a disorientating 9/4 time signature. Best of all is the pulsating minimalism of Swelter, where Brennan’s jabbering, descending vibes melody and Reid’s four-to-the-bar basslines are set to an urgent krautrock beat.
Also out this month
On Appear to Fade (released 29 September, Figureight Records), Richard Sears plays limpid, meditative chords and improvisations on an acoustic piano and an una corda, then digitally vandalises these recordings using tape loops and electronic effects. The result sounds like a vintage recording of Keith Jarrett or Harold Budd decaying and melting on analogue tape – in the most beautiful and enchanting way.
On the rather lovely Resonance (released 29 September, Relax Your Ears) Chicago multi-instrumentalist Joel Styzens plays hammered dulcimer and acoustic guitar in a series of folksy, minimalist, blissfully bucolic settings that feature British cellist Sophie Webber, jazz pianist Rob Clearfield and the Atlys String Quartet.
And Is Phi is the nom de band of south east Londoner Andrea Isabella Phillips, whose debut album Double Pink (Albert’s Favourites) features wonderfully wayward and woozy melodies, sung in a haunted whisper, largely drumless and arrhythmic, but sometimes overlaid with Madlib-style wonky R&B beats. Someone to keep an eye on.
