Albums that start off with a bang, like the latest from guitarist Pravin Thompson, are hard to ignore.
This record opens up with pure grit guitar and bombastic drums. Pravin and his band sets the stage early on with the release of A Thoughtful Collapse. Tunes, like the first track Devil At Your Heels, take wild hair pin turns with all the contrast in sound similar to the featured album art. This is instrumental music and probably best described as Jazz, while at the same time the approach is shredding fire with a keen eye towards compositional arrangement that nods to the texture and tones of indie and alternative rock. Imagine a killing rock band that lost their singer but realized that vocals were not necessary to get the point across, actually better that instruments do the speaking to each other and to the listener because the message and emotions are complex and abstract. This is heady music, time gets chopped up so you don’t know what is foreground and what is background and that’s alright because the overall effect is jaw dropping… All in the first tune. You, dear listener, could stop listening at the first track and be convinced to just check out this band live for that visceral crackling energy transmission.
Jazz is not dead and who ever talks about any art form being “dead“ doesn’t know jack shit and doesn’t listen to enough new music. There is always someone poking and pulling at sounds bringing out new incarnations even from the time tested idioms of music. When I lived in NYC in the mid to late 90s I soaked up the “downtown“ music scene. Alt.Coffee, The Knitting Factory (on Leonard St.), The Bell Cafe, Tonic. Tonic was a big one for me. At the time the most interesting music was being performed at Tonic. One night it could be total abstract sheets of noise another night a Balkan rock band (anyone remember Pachora?) Klezmer free jazz, John Zorn game pieces... Pravin Thompson’s music would fit in perfectly with that scene if it still existed today.
This music has gone places with me and I’ve gone places in my mind wandering around while listening, letting it wash over my brain, especially as I get more familiar with the mood shifts that can traverse a lot of terrain all in one tune. These tunes are tiny universes filled with shifting textural detail and clouds of notes that swarm in extended long lines that seem like run on sentences but coalesce in an unsteady truce. The second tune, Elysium is a perfect example of this. It’s true that each song could punctuate a playlist but listening to the whole record start to finish is the ultimate reward.
This is abstract music, yes. It also weaves toe tapping melodies who lyricism is tempered by gritty timbre and counter rhythms. Highway Lights sounds like a fitting title for the soundscape of the song. The beginning will remind you of another tune with a Twist just like a good pop tune should. Nothing lasts for too long in the structure of these songs. They travel, always interesting tangents that return to various themes in the music.
The improvised sections dovetails with song structure in a way that doesn’t have that typical jazz head / solo thing going on, more of a rock or indie rock approach with edges smoothed out in the transitions and with added drama and character as the instrumentation croons to a fevered pitch only to delve deeply into complex time punctuated blasts of rough tones and sonic splatter. The hairpin shifts do not feel cut and paste more curated with an editors touch for timing.