by Steven Miller

Danish trombonist and composer Lis Wessberg has been moving steadily toward a style that pulls contemporary jazz, chamber writing, and song form into the same space without forcing any of them to dominate. On In the Wake of Blue, Veronika Rud joins Wessberg as a featured vocalist to form another melodic voice. Her lines often shadow the trombone, move beside it, or integrate into the ensemble texture altogether.

The record handles motion in a methodical manner. Everything unfolds gradually. Grooves settle in patiently. Harmonic movement stretches out toward obvious release points. The solos [...]

by Shannon Smith

Broken View finds Sam Barber building songs slowly and pushing them outward. Every arrangement on Broken View begins with something grounded that expands. Starting with acoustic sounds and close vocal phrasing before drums, layered guitars, steel, or fiddle broaden the emotional field around it. The record’s power does not come from oversized hooks or polished melodic repetition. It comes from the motion the song’s bring. Letting the rolling tom patterns, opening choruses, suspended guitar textures, and Barber’s ability to let a vocal line strain slightly against the groove without losing the story underneath it [...]

by Steven Miller

Steve Reich’s music has long depended on a clear premise: of steady pulse and layered harmonic materials.  This is used to develop his compositions over time. His sextet works focus on that by distributing rhythm and harmony across interlocking compositional theme. With groups moving in poly-tonal and poly-rhythmic patterns anchored by a grounding pedal. Anchoring them in a manner that provides context.

With Steve Reich: The Sextets, the Colin Currie Group presents these works as variations on Reich’s composition structural logic. The ensemble has a long-term relationship with [...]

by Steven Miller

It’s the Long Goodbye is a ten-track sound painting, where layers of sound carry what language cannot through building and receding. The Twilight Sad narrate loss as an emotional reaction built over time, stacking sounds, harmonic moods, and pressures until something finally gives.

What defines this record is its multi-layered escalation and controlled release. Songs constantly grow, accumulating a mood and energy, the pressure against rest and peacefulness.  Synth arpeggios, distorted guitar fields, haunting backing vocal counterlines, all layered and pressing forward against a [...]

by Shannon Smith

Grace Ives has spent the past several years turning archetypal formats like the nursery rhyme, the ringtone, and the nine-to-five into a repertoire of oblique pop standards. Her 2022 breakthrough, Janky Star, captured the raw, youthful excitement of a newcomer, praised by critics for its experimental edge. Three years later, Girlfriend arrives as a more confident, cohesive statement. As Ives herself put it, looking back on the earlier record: “I was a baby.”

The album’s cumulative effect is of belting to the radio in your car, a high-drama pop monument to trying, flopping, and trying [...]

by Steven Miller

Agua Con Gas is best understood as a project of arrangements and compositional architecture that is brought to life by a talented set of ensembles. Dave Schumacher leads a set of nine tracks realized through Cubeye’s performances of layered ensemble writing and sectional development. Each selection’s form acts as the primary mechanism for integrating ensemble textures and improvisational settings. Drawing from a balance of original compositions and reimagined material, the album is filled with enjoyable harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic content.

That approach is realized through Cubeye’s [...]