Label: Loveland Music, 2025

Personnel - Thomas Morgan: WOODS, bass (#1); Dan Weiss: tabla (#2); Craig Taborn: keys (#3); Gerald Cleaver: drums (#4); Henry Threadgill: flutes (#5); Ambrose akinmusire: trumpet (#6); Bill Frisell: electric and acoustic guitar (#7); Immanuel Wilkins; alto saxophone (#8); Gary Snyder: voice (#9).

The open-minded, in-demand bassist Thomas Morgan takes an unforeseen and ambitious path in his highly conceptual debut as a leader, Around You is a Forest. At once intimate and spellbinding, the album features one solo performance and eight duets with a distinguished lineup of guests. What makes this project so remarkable is Morgan’s invention of WOODS—a programmed virtual string instrument that fuses characteristics of West African lute-harps, Asian zithers, cimbalom, and marimba. He pioneers this technique with sophistication and restraint, providing exotic yet organic foundations that inspire his collaborators to become co-narrators in sound.

The title track opens the album with Morgan alone, offering a breathtaking bass meditation that leads us into a vividly imagined forest. His resonant tone paints an enchanted landscape from which one has no desire to return. “Eddies”, featuring drummer Dan Weiss on tabla, is a rhythmic delight evoking Afrobeat and electronic music; its circular motion mirrors the flow of water around rocks in a stream.

“Dream Sequence”, with keyboardist Craig Taborn, unfolds like an experimental film score, layered in eerie dual-synth polyphony. “In the Dark” welcomes composer Henry Threadgill into a noir-ish soundscape of restless mystery, his flute and bass flute intertwining with Morgan’s textures. The 16-minute “Through the Trees”, with the resourceful drummer Gerald Cleaver adding color and vibration behind the drum kit, explores shifting loops and hazy atmospherics, building from enigmatic reverie to thunderous intensity. On “Murmuration”, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins floats in and out of focus through eight layered lines above a ngoni-like texture. This is the closest to jazz you can get—even if sometimes it sounds like an off-beat chorale of sorts.

Among the album’s highlights are “Assembly of Beings” and “Rising From the West”. The former, featuring trumpet master Ambrose Akinmusire, enchants with beautifully intoned notes, terse staccatos, and poignant outbursts over a drone-inflected steel-string zither tapestry. The latter, a luminous collaboration with guitarist Bill Frisell, takes us to another dimension within its spacious atmosphere. Melodious guitar fillings are discreetly shaken by electric distortion at some point, in a genuine communion between New York-based musicians who grew up in the West Coast. The album closes gracefully with “Here”, a poetic coda featuring Gary Snyder reciting his own verse in a calm, transfixing voice.

Still absorbing its many layers, I have no doubt Around You is a Forest is the work of a visionary—distinct, immersive, and profoundly original. Each piece feels self-contained yet essential to the whole. Traditionalists may balk, but this may well be the year’s most imaginative and best debut.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Around You is a Forest ► 04 - Through The Trees ► 06 - Assembly of All Beings ► 07 - Rising From the West

Label: Contagious Music, 2025

Personnel - Devin Daniels: alto saxophone; Jeff Parker: guitar; Billy Mohler: bass; Damion Reid: drums.

On his latest album, The Eternal, LA bassist and composer Billy Mohler applies his signature groovy formulas with a firm grip in the rock music, delivering another striking album of originals alongside a new quartet of influential LA-based musicians. After three albums featuring reedist Chris Speed, trumpeter Shane Endsley, and drummer Nate Wood, his lineup now includes saxophonist Devin Daniels, guitarist Jeff Parker, and drummer Damion Reid.

The album opener, “Those Who Know”, was written for Reid, who stuns with a rock-infused feel in the beat. Mohler sets everything in motion with a dynamic groove, over which sax and guitar flow effortlessly in parallel. Parker’s harmonic support and liquid tremolos stand out, as does his work on “Hawk Wind”, another piece built around a mesmerizing bass figure, and where he employs volume swells to create a warm ambiance. He then solos through a spellbinding sequence, adding elegant tension to his phrasing with half-tone shifts. The rhythm section remains finely attuned to the soloists, with Reid simultaneously delivering a hi-hat pulse and mallet-driven eloquence in support of Daniels’ beautifully crafted improvisation.

For blues enthusiasts, this band offers two distinct takes on the genre: “Adaptation” is an intrepid, jittery excursion in six, brimming with restless drum work and a whimsical guitar improvisation, while “Sooner”, inspired by Mohler’s late uncle Doug—a member of the Chippewa tribe—emerges as a full-figured 4/4 blues. Additionally, the album features five ‘Eternal’ pieces—short solo bass stories, exquisitely expressed through thick, resonant tones and a refined pizzicato technique.

“Reflection” is a sophisticated ballad, elegantly balanced with harmonic and melodic tunefulness, whereas “Destroyer” is a formidable powerhouse, an energetic rock-infused foray that culminates in an unexpected resolution. On “Tsunami”, Mohler ignites the groove with an intense yet controlled heat, achieving a fine equilibrium between tension and release. Despite its foreboding title, the piece radiates a thoughtful optimism, shaped by tempo shifts and soulful statements from Parker and Daniels.

Mohler unquestionably knows how to throw down a groove, providing a fertile foundation for his bandmates to explore freely. His approach—firmly rooted in the contemporary post-bop school—frequently arrives with rock-like muscularity. The Eternal, a brew of heady, spirited groovy magnitude and boldly creative hybridity, ensures that no listener remains static.

Favorite Tracks:

01 - Those Who Know ► 04 - Hawk Wind ► 07 - Destroyer ► 12 - Tsunami