Label: Out of Your Head Records, 2021

Personnel - Jonathan Goldberger: guitar; Mat Maneri: viola; Simon Jermyn: electric bass; Gerald Cleaver: drums.

This ‘Untamed’ performance, another one digged up and recovered by the Out of Your Head label, features a quartet of ripe, well-integrated avant-gardists that includes guitarist Jonathan Goldberger, violist Mat Maneri, bassist Simon Jermyn and drummer Gerald Cleaver.

The single 36-minute improvisation that appears on this record was played live at Scholes Street Studio in Brooklyn, at a time where the group was gigging regularly. Suffice to say that the musical cohesiveness usually found in close collaborators are pretty much on display here. The quartet’s instinctive behavior and freedom allow them to create a palette of inviting sounds that you’ve likely never heard before.

The smart, unconventional atmospheres are continually intriguing and nearly makes us jump out of the reality to embark on a surreal voyage with a lot to discover.

The infallible rhythmic support provided by Jermyn and Cleaver often falls into free-flowing grooves and cyclic pedals that regularly change physiognomies, ensuring that there’s plenty of freedom for Goldberger and Maneri to create and interact. The microtonal vulnerability of the viola together with the moody, mercurial guitar consistently push things into a state of suspension that, although never threatening, pricks our senses.

On occasion, you are offered electronic-like abstractions and constructive ruminations proper of the experimental avant-garde universe. Then the group opens a nice free-funk backdoor that leads into a gentle rubato contemplation tied up with off-kilter composed motifs. On other instances, you’ll be able to enjoy largely atmospheric folk sounds turned into pastoral elegies that feed into imaginary bucolic landscapes slightly blurred by a thin mist. The group concludes in a sort of Radiohead’s stylings through a circumscribed 4/4 harmonic routine.

The impression is strong, and I would definitely like to see this group come out with a studio recording sometime in the near future.

Label: Skirl Records, 2018

Personnel - JP Schlegelmilch: keyboards; Jonathan Goldberger: guitars; Jim Black: drums.

This cohesive new organ trio co-led by Brooklyn-based keyboardist JP Schlegelmilch, guitarist Jonathan Goldberger, and drummer Jim Black, ventures down creative paths of indie rock with a casual, serrated jazzy edge in its statements. Their album, Visitors, is staggeringly crafted with a rugged, psychedelic rock technique and assertive textural developments, featuring eight tracks whose instrumental depth is consummated by the magical interplay among the trio members.

“Corvus” is a prog-rock archetypal that perhaps better illustrates this. Electronic manipulations precede the excavation of a 7/4 groove exalted by sturdy rock moves and fleshed out by an incandescent guitar solo that comprehends flickering sound waves, bluesy riffs, arpeggiated sequences, and jazzy chords. After a calmer passage, the groove shifts to six, seducing Schlegelmilch and Goldberger to embark on a cross-conversational dialogue while Black holds to a funky percussive flux.

Showcasing brighter tones and intense emotions, “Ether Sun” is a Pink Floyd-esque song elegantly arranged with soaring keyboard sounds, smooth bass coordination, and firmly fixed rhythm.

Stressing idiomatic rock textures, “Lake Oblivion” is divided into two distinct yet complementary parts. The first one carries a restless ambiguity in its classic hard-rock charisma, while the second, advancing at a 5/4 tempo, equips the same package with popish acoustic instrumentation and a distorted electric fizz.

The title track comes hooked in a triple meter. The versatile drummer moves with sheer boldness, supporting the use of methodical synth maneuvers for ambient and noisy guitar strokes for impact.

If “Chiseler” erupts with tactile dissonances and power chords in a clear inclination toward prog-rock, then “Terminal Waves” has its climatic peak with Goldberger’s cryptic metal-inflected solo over an exquisite textural work that becomes slightly tumultuous until mitigated by atmospheric organ layers and drones.

Being a deluxe product of like-minded cohorts, Visitors is also striking and rewarding, displaying enough personality and range to keep us thrilled.

Favorite Tracks:

03 - Ether Sun ► 04 - Corvus ► 06 - Lake Oblivion II