Phillip Golub: Partisan Ship

      Descriptions like busy, complex, and synth-driven only begin to characterize keyboardist and composer Phillip Golub’s latest project, the boldly inventive Partisan Ship. To broaden the instrumental range of the music, Golub has enlisted the talents of some of the forward-looking musicians in New York City, including saxophonists Anna Webber, Yuma Uesaka and David Leon, trumpeter Amir ElSaffar, and 5-string violinist Layale Chaker. Each of them drops in the mix here and there to contribute a solo. The spare but effective soloing by ElSaffar, who’s feeling quite at home in the electronic haze on loyalty oath, alto saxophonist Leon and Chaker on the murky and vaguely Middle Eastern blue-orange reflections, and Anna Webber, throaty and angular on cries of the initiated, are worth noting. But the real star of the show is the rhythm section, with Golub with his Flexichord virtual piano and synthesizers, Elias Stemeseder and his synthesizers, bassist Sam Minaie and percussionist Jon Starks. Together, they create a densely textured symphony of beeps, bloops, mini-explosions, ghostly piano tinkling, and much more. Since the individual tracks all run into the next piece without a pause, the three-quarters of an hour running time of Partisan Ship is seemingly designed to be listened from start to finish. While I’m especially fond of the tricky rhythms of loyalty oath, the glorious cacophony of cries of the initiated and the warped ballad utopian micronation, it’s the overall effect that is especially impressive. Partisan Ship is a fascinating album, and is heartily recommended. 

Berthold Records; Phillip Golub (Flexichord virtual piano, Behringer Neutron, Arturia Digital synths) Yuma Uesaka (cl, bcl, cbcl, ts, bass ‘clariflute’ on 1, 3, 5, 8, 10) Amir ElSaffar (tpt on 1, 3, 5, 9) Anna Webber (fl, ts on 3,5,8) David Leon (as on 7,9) Layale Chaker (5-string violin on 7) Elias Stemeseder (Prophet VI, Moog Minitaur, Modular Synths on 1,3,5,6) Sam Minaie (b on 3,5,8) Jon Starks (d, sensory perc, snaps, drum machine on 1-3, 5, 7-10; elec on 2); Brooklyn, NY & NYC, no dates specified; 1 loyalty oath/2 interlude (aboard)/ 3 partisan ship/ 4 interlude (adorn)/ 5 mutiny meeting/ 6 interlude (adrift)/ 7 blue-orange reflections/ 8 cries of the initiated/ 9 utopian micronation/ 10 afterword: partisan session; 44:46. phillipgolub.bandcamp.com

Phillip Golub: Abiding Memory

  There’s plenty of music out there that bludgeons the listener with unabashed intensity. Pianist Phillip Golub’s music, on the evidence of Abiding Memory, is more insinuating and subtle. Working in a quintet format, with electric guitarist Alec Goldfarb, cellist Daniel Hass, bassist Sam Minaie, and drummer Vincent Atria, Golub’s music weaves lengthy melodic lines into an often surprising, perpetually fluctuating compositional style. As is often the case, track titles betray the way Golub thinks about his music. The opening pair of pieces, Catching a Thread and Threads Gather, establish the key metaphor for these tracks. It’s not easy to talk about “solo” and “accompaniment” in this music. Guitarist Goldfarb is prominent on Threads Gather, but until the last minute or so when he’s heard all by himself, the rest of the band is off on individual tangents that somehow all fit together. It’s a boon to the listener that the revelatory mix by drummer Atria allows all of the complexity of Golub’s arrangements to shine through. The Group to Hear is notable for the basic structure of piano and guitar playing a game of musical tag over a fairly sparse ensemble sound. For the slowly moving and mildly dissonant A Regrouping, Golub’s arrangement features harpsichord and piano, bowed bass and cello, lightly tapped cymbals and drums, and a smattering of guitar. The music picks up towards the end before morphing directly into Unspooled (Waiting Quietly). This is one of the less complex tracks, with a comparatively straight-ahead groove under an electric piano solo by Golub and a guitar solo by Goldfarb. The multi-part Where Lapses Elapse gets back to the layered strategies that characterize his music. The ominous At the 11th Hour threatens to explode around a repeated cello riff, but Golub on piano and Atria on drums hold things together. The harpsichord is back for the eerie A Moment Becomes, which leads right into Abiding Memory. For the title track, Golub puts his piano front and center, with hints of Jaki Byard, Don Pullen, and early Cecil Taylor in his generally dark and fragmented style. Vijay Iyer, who contributed a luminous liner essay for his one-time student, lauds the “impassioned sincerity [and] irrepressible ardor” of the music. This is a very young band, and they all sound ready for anything that a composer or fellow improviser throws at them. If, like me, you use your knowledge of particular players whose work you enjoyed to follow them in other projects, here’s a quintet of names to keep in mind. Definitely recommended.

Endectomorph Music BR324045; Phillip Golub (p, Rhodes el p, harpsichord) Alec Goldfarb (el g) Daniel Hass (clo) Sam Minaie (b) Vicente Atria (d); Astoria, NY, no dates indicated; Catching a Thread/ Threads Gather/ The Group to Hear/ A Regrouping/ Unspooled (Waiting Quietly)/ In a Secret Corner/ Where Lapses Elapse/ At the 11th Hour/ A Movement Becomes/ Abiding Memory; 58:17. www.endectomorph.com