Label: ESP-Disk, 2019
Personnel - Thollem McDonas: keyboards; Nels Cline: electric guitars; Michael Wimberly: drums.
Radical Empathy Trio is a dialoguing collective project co-led by keyboardist Thollem McDonas, guitarist Nels Cline, and drummer Michael Wimberly. Reality and Other Imaginary Places, their sophomore album, marks the return of the trio after a four-year hiatus.
The album was recorded during McDonas’ 2017 residency at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn and consists of two improvised tracks of approximately 20 minutes each. The varied sonic atmospheres are a natural result from the progressive interplay between the artists, who show identical facility in generating tenuous soundscapes for an enchanting spell or in electrifying the listener through tumultuous currents of noise and electronic raids.
“Collective Tunnels” kicks off with the keyboardist and the guitarist blending their sounds with a concordant vision and complementary timbre. At this early stage, Wimberly sustains with softness what his co-workers plot, but his chops expand in intensity with the time. Brief distorted guitar washes, convergences and divergences in the conversational fluency, and opportune electronic manipulations, all contribute to the positive effect. A loop-like guitar ostinato combines with the idiosyncratic overtones of a virtually computerized keyboard, in an experimental texture that anticipates an incursion into noise rock embroidered with futuristic sounds. These imaginary places are depicted with copious technology to draw the listener in.
Wimberly’s actions are never intrusive, not even when he injects more puissance as a reaction to the provocative sounds of his trio mates. He switches to brushes for a softer substratum, but the bluesy vibes of that particular phase don’t last long, since Cline bulges his guitar work with art punk attitude and post-Hendrix uproar. McDonas’ offsetting lines thicken to a bray, and all things funnel into an industrial rock from the future before landing on the protuberances of a synth-driven psychedelic rock à-la Deep Purple.
“Conscious Tunnels” embraces a quieter, if intriguing, narrative in its preliminary solo piano part, evolving with freedom and good sense. It’s a dusty, bumpy trip whose distinctive timbral palette benefits with the inclusion of phrase exchanges in corrosive counterpoint, eerie drones, speculative ostinatos, and graceful aesthetic vocalizations. The climax is reached with sinewy piano initiatives, scattershot rhythms with heavy cymbals, and gusts of distorted guitar. The massive dissonance created disintegrates about three and a half minutes from the end, ultimately reposing in a lofty tranquility that invites us to contemplate.
This open-form alchemy is for the open-eared. They have plenty to chew on here, and good reasons to rejoice with the bold taste of the music.
Grade A-
Favorite Track:
01 - Collective Tunnels