(2021) Spiral Wave Nomads - First Encounters


Review:
When guitarists and drummers improvise together, it’s often especially fruitful for the drummer. Disburdened of the need to keep any sort of band together, percussionists in duos can leave the beat behind and find something like a melodic groove. That was certainly true of the Gunn-Truscinski disc and before that for Ryley Walker and Charles Rumback’s collaboration. It’s a valid observation here, too, in this four song, free-jammed, psychedelic trip from Burnt Hills’ Eric Hardiman and Twin Lakes’ founder Michael Kiefer. Thus, the long opener, Evidence of New Gravitation, pits a swirling mass of guitar sound against abstract and irregular masses of drums. Kiefer splatter paints like Jackson Pollock in multicolored surges, building rumbling edifices on toms and topping them with a single, glimmering shard of cymbal. Hardiman, for his part, churns up and out of indeterminancy, seeking something bright and clarifying in the murk. What coalesces has a roiling, turbulent surge to it, an elemental quality that gains as the piece goes on, as the playing grows wilder and more unhinged, with vibrating bits of wah and whammy and battering cascades of tonal percussion. In “Fitful Embers,” which completes side A, Hardiman plays with the noises that altered guitars can make, squeaks and groans and rattles, rather than full-blown notes or chords. Kiefer skitters agitatedly over snares and cymbals in soft, feverish patterns. The cut is shorter, more abrasive and more abstract than the opener, though full of its own electricity. The album’s second side is more tranquil, slowing the pace and leaving space in the mix for reflection. “Radiant Drifter” radiates rustic serenity, pushing the guitar back and fuzzing it over with overtones but letting the thump of drums happen right up close so that they reverberate in your chest. “Of a Similar Mind” is even more reflective, distilling luminous guitar tone into liquid and scattering buckshot sprays of percussion over it. The album is called First Encounters because, although the two musicians have recorded together before, they did it remotely, sending files back and forth electronically from Hardiman’s home base in Albany to Kiefer’s in New Haven, Connecticut. For this album, recorded well before the lockdown in summer 2019, the two were in a room together for a single afternoon.  Time well spent for both of them, but maybe especially for Kiefer slipping out of the cage of timekeeping and taking flight.





Tracklist:
01 - Evidence of New Gravitation
02 - Fitful Embers
03 - Radiant Drifter
04 - Of a Similar Mind


Media Report:
Genre: post-rock, psychedelic rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits