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.