Kolejną pozycją w katalogu niezależnej amerykańskiej wytwórni Out Of Your Head po albumie kontrabasisty Nicka Dunstona: "Atlantic Extraction", jest płyta klawiszowca i kompozytora Curta Sydnora: "Deep End Shallow".
Curt Sydnor angażuje się w rozliczne projekty jak np. przygotowywanie opraw muzycznych dla rozmaitych uroczystości, widowisk multimedialnych, czy programów radiowo-telewizyjnych. Poza tego typu działaniami muzyk udziela się w różnych grupach koncertujących w Nowym Jorku, jak np. Mirah, czy formacje Yonatana Gata i Janki Nabay
Płytę "Deep End Shallow", która ukazała się 20 marca, wypełnia muzyka z pogranicza jazzu, psychodelicznego rocka i eksperymentu.
Program nagrany został w towarzystwie nowojorskich przyjaciół artysty: saksofonistki Caroline Davis, gitarzysty Aarona Dugana, basisty Michaela Coltuna i perkusisty Grega Sauniera.
Nick Dunston połączył fascynacje takimi artystami jak Marc Ribot, Nels Cline, czy Herbie Hancock z własnym sposobem muzycznej wypowiedzi.
Robert Ratajczak
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Curt Sydnor: Deep End Shallow
CD
program:
1. Starewell
2. Fall Behind
3. It Is What It Was
4. Rus In Urbe
5. Them!
6. Fieldgaze Variations
7. Deep End Shallow
8. Well Of Stares
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materiały prasowe:
"Deep End Shallow" (OOYH 005) is keyboardist Curt Sydnor's sound-dream of a working musician living at the confluence of the different styles and music scenes in Brooklyn circa 2016 (Sydnor relocated to Richmond VA in early 2019). Featuring the inventive drumming of Greg Saunier (Deerhoof), as well as saxophonist Caroline Davis (Alula, Lee Konitz), bassist Michael Coltun (Mdou Moctar, Les Rhinocéros), and guitarist Aaron Dugan (Matisyahu), this record is a searing and fun document, veering from psych-jazz to Russian Romanticism to Afrobeat, punctuated by the somber reminder that “all is ever as it used to be”. Musically a synthesis of the diverse groups Sydnor was involved with at the time and inspired by artists like Deerhoof, Marc Ribot, Nels Cline, Julia Holter, Herbie Hancock, and Yonatan Gat, it draws occasional lyrical inspiration from early childhood memories and a dark chapter in the history of Lynchburg Virginia, where Sydnor was raised.
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| Curt Sydnor, Photo Credit: Andrea Devening, 2019 |
The album's few lyrics in "Fall Behind", as well at the title track "Deep End Shallow", are in reaction to the closing of Lynchburg's Riverside Park Pool in the early 60s. One of Sydnor's earliest childhood memories are of this old public swimming pool, which local authorities drained in 1961 as a vindictive response to efforts by local civil rights leaders to integrate Lynchburg's whites-only swimming pools. In an interview Sydnor recalls "It still stands exactly as they left it. As a young child I saw this and would ask why the pool was full of green grass, even in the deep end". He continues "It’s a modern ruin--a beautiful public space forfeited by our inability to live up to our ideals. A place made sadder since it was designed for joy. As a kid I was only able to pick up on the senselessness of it and probably some of the sadness too (“why would somebody do that?”)". As he composed "Fall Behind" Sydnor recalled the memory of beautifully cut stone of the pool gazebo and flooring, thrown into relief by the grass growing up where the water should be. "That’s the simple image that really speaks to me and which kept creeping into the lyrics".
Unfollow, fall behind
Disconnect this dream
Rewind the tape
Unfollow up with me
Let’s describe to the high industrialists
Fields mown fallow
The deep end is shallow
Don’t fill it in, men
Think of the children.
None can swim
Why would somebody do that?
Why would somebody do that?
He used to be a good lad.
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| Riverside Park Pool (Lynchburg VA), Photo Credit: Curt Sydnor, 2019 |
Curt Sydnor is a composer and keyboardist recently relocated Richmond VA from Brooklyn NY. In 2019 he premiered Cemetery City, a new work for piano and synthesizer dedicated to Lynchburg's Old City Cemetery. His solo project "Materials" and their "Destiny" is a jazz multimedia suite inspired by architect Louis Sullivan's System of Architectural Ornament. The work was premiered at the Dimenna Center and in May 2013 as part of the SoundCircuitNYC music series and was released as an album by ears&eyes records in September 2015. In 2014 he composed the soundtrack for a series of interviews with author Jared Diamond for Seven Stories Press. Sydnor plays keyboards in a variety of NYC based groups which include bands led by Mirah, Yonatan Gat, and the late Janka Nabay. He recently gave the US premier of a new large piano work by Greg Saunier on the "Drawing Sound" series. Before moving to NYC in 2011 CS co-led the Chicago-based septet Disassembly. In 2010 he received a Downbeat Student Award for his arrangement of Deerhoof's “Spirit Ditties of No Tone". From 2012-2014 he was a member of BMI's Jazz Composers Workshop. CS studied piano and composition at the Russian Academy of Music, Indiana University, and Vanderbilt.
Greg Saunier is a musician, producer, and composer best known as the drummer of Deerhoof. Rolling Stone included Saunier alongside Brian Chippendale (of Lightning Bolt) and Zach Hill (of Hella) as together composing "a generation of trailblazing 21st-century avant-rock percussionists."
Mobile since her birth in Singapore, composer and saxophonist Caroline Davis lives in Brooklyn NY. In 2018 she won the Downbeat Critic’s Poll “rising star” in the alto saxophone category. Caroline’s third album "Heart Tonic", was released on Sunnyside Records to much acclaim in NPR, the New York Times, and DownBeat. Davis’ self-titled Alula, featuring Matt Mitchell and Greg Saunier, was released on New Amsterdam Records May 10, 2019. She has shared musical moments with a diverse group of musicians, from jazz to improvised and composed music, recently including Lee Konitz, Angelica Sanchez, Matt Mitchell, Miles Okazaki, Matt Wilson, and Billy Kaye. Her regular collaborations include Maitri, Whirlpool, and Persona (with Rob Clearfield). In March of 2019, she was a composer-in-residence at the esteemed MacDowell Colony, and was awarded the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship for 2019-20.
Additional Track Info (Single Releases):
"Starewell" (track 1, releases 2/28/2020) was originally conceived as an instrumental homage to Deerhoof’s “Spy on You”, with opening and closing textures akin to Herbie Hancock’s “Succotash”. the Deerhoof melody only makes a brief appearance, appropriately disguised by inversion. Greg Saunier’s chaotic cowbell here introduces Side A and reappears at its conclusion.
The title "Fall Behind" (track 2, releases 3/6/2020) alludes to the song’s main musical motive, heard in canon throughout at a distance of one beat removed. The lyrics begin as a stream of consciousness meditation on “disconnecting” and pursuing a creative life, but soon pivot to the realm of memory with the image of a swimming pool filled with earth. The groove of this song was inspired by Francis Bebey’s “New Track” and less directly by Sydnor’s brief tenure as keyboardist in the late Janka Nabay’s band alongside bassist Mikey Coltun and guitarist Ofir Ganon, who also appear on the track.
"Rus in Urbe" (track 4, releases 3/13/2020) is a frenetic romp through the traditional AABA form. It features Caroline Davis sending her alto through a guitar amp and guitarist Aaron Dugan sounding Ribot-esque in an unaccompanied solo. The song is named after a rejected working title for the second book in William Faulkner’s “Snopes Trilogy”. On the album it follows a similar chord progression as the slow track which precedes it and reappears as the coda.
"Them!" (track 5, releases 3/20/2020) was constructed around a jarring, sliding bass frequency discovered by accident on the Korg MS-20 synthesizer. The song’s middle section features the Arp Solina Strings synthesizer, one of which was conveniently set up for use at Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn, where main tracking for the album took place. The solo section consists of an impassioned keyboard/drum duet between Sydnor and Saunier. The title refers to a screenprint of the same name by artist Lany Devening.
