Rachel Eckroth and John Hadfield: Speaking In Tongues (Adhyâropa Records)
Religious and scientific mysteries inspired this duo release from pianist Rachel Eckroth and percussionist John Hadfield. The two musicians met during their university days. They study big questions about life, death and the universe via 10 original compositions on Speaking In Tongues.
Even with just two musicians in the studio, it was still a tight squeeze. Nine keyboards, synthesizers and electronic doodads are credited to Eckroth – plus vocals. Hadfield’s drumkit was wedged between 10 other bits of hardware, including kalimba and Myanmar bells. The resulting music is vivid and rich, with overlapping analogue layers and extra digital dimensions.
That depth and density shines through from the first track, God Particle. Eckroth’s angelic and auto-tuned vocal sighing swims across long-note drones and plinky droplets from various synths. Hadfield’s percussion is fidgety but groovy. This is a dream-like piece that gives wheels and wings to the listener’s imagination.
Thumbs pluck the metal keys of a kalimba on Andromeda. The instrument has an enigmatic voice that seems to reverberate off some invisible skein in the air. It’s a good fit for this ethereal album, where a small cast delivers a full-bodied performance. After a slow build up, an understated and R&B-adjacent beat drops. It’s a careful but cool number.
The title track features the widest range of electronic effects and loops. Eckroth is typically an all-or-nothing soloist, leaving big gaps between intricate shapes. She plays faster and heavier here, careening up and down her grand piano and various other keyboards.
Eckroth and Hadfield packed a lot of kit into the studio for Speaking In Tongues – and packed each tune with remarkable fullness too. Such wide-ranging, immersive dialogue is unusual for a college reunion. And while this record may not answer all of life’s big questions, it does reward a certain degree of study.
Julia Hülsmann Quartet: Under The Surface (ECM Records 7528093)
Each band member wrote material for this record – but its 10 contemporary jazz compositions have a similar character. This is self-restrained music that examines profound ideas and emotions, without ever letting them overflow. Even when improvising, the musicians seem to bite their tongues or change the subject before spilling home truths into the microphone.
That consistent mood reflects the long associations between band members. Pianist Julia Hülsmann has played with bassist Marc Muellbauer and drummer Heinrich Köbberling for more than two decades, while tenor saxophonist Uli Kempendorff is another familiar collaborator. Trumpeter Hildegunn Øiseth joins the established quartet for five tracks.
Many compositions evoke a wistful feeling via loping rhythms. They Stumble, They Walk opens the record with a quiet and disquieted atmosphere. Hülsmann gets the first solo and deals in long lines and runs, her ideas defined more by their journey than their arrival at any fixed destination.
A Norwegian goat horn steals the limelight on Bubbles. The instrument has a whistly voice, plaintive and hoarse. It’s another hesitant piece that keeps its powder dry, although the final two minutes showcase the saxophone and trumpet helixing around a driving drumbeat.
A ballad for duet, The Earth Below, stands out. Despite the smallest instrumentation on the album, it presents the most moving and memorable listening experience. Hülsmann lets simple piano patterns linger in the air. Øiseth’s trumpet tone is broad here, with gorgeously fizzing low notes.
Julia Hülsmann has strong connections to her bandmates and the group shares a common tendency to hold back rather than holding forth. Under The Surface reveals flashes of the sentiments stirring in its five contributors without ever coughing up the deepest details. It’s a titillating and tantalising record.
Nicola Miller: Living Things (Cacophonous Revival Recordings CRR-025)
The remote and dramatic natural landscape of Nova Scotia shapes alto saxophonist Nicola Miller’s music. Field recordings of barges and seagulls sit beneath improvised sounds on this debut. Eight tracks mix free playing with composed passages, without clear divisions between the two. It’s a busy album that pulls the listener’s attention in several different directions at the same time.
Miller is Canadian and completed formal music education 20 years ago but then chose to reject a career in jazz – before recently rekindling her love of playing. That turnaround included a master’s degree at Jazz Institut Berlin, where she connected with reed player Frank Gratkowski. He appears on Living Things alongside Doug Tielli (trombone), Nicholas D’Amato (bass) and Nick Fraser (drums).
The opening track, Barge, features humming and snoring noises captured from a barge tied to a dock. Sparse and nervous improvisations hover above this backdrop. Like many experimental saxophone players, Miller rarely descends from the dog-whistle end of the instrument’s extended register. There’s a pained quality to her sound and a syllabic, vocal lilt to much of her phrasing.
A carpet of metallic scraping and squeakiness lies beneath a hymnal melodic line from trombone and bass on Poplar. That juxtaposition of order and disorder is characteristic of this record. It also reflects the current moment in history.
Sea ducks are the muse for Buffleheads. Bowed bass, saxophone and trombone present a yawning theme together. That theme returns, sandwiched between sections of free playing that create a cyclical structure for this ominous eight-minute piece.
Nicola Miller has taken an unhurried approach to her music career and her first release bursts at the seams with impulses and ideas. Living Things is an animated album of sharp contradictions. And it bears the stamp of its origins in the sparse but striking landscape of Nova Scotia.
