In Layers, Onno Govaert, Marcelo dos Reis, Luis Vicente, Kristjan Martinsson

On the front cover of the new improv release In Layers (FMR 2016) is a reproduction of a beautifully omni-dimensional painting by Chris Ripkin, from which the album takes its title. Inside the jacket is a Ripkin quote which serves as the defining aesthetic statement for the process envisioned in his artwork and, by extension, the music on the album. "Each layer," he states, "[calls] for a new layer more transparent, until it gets silent."

The very creative and capable quartet holds forth on this freely improvised set of six segments in ways which translate freely that visual activity into pure sound.

This is a potent get-together of Onno Govaert on drums, Marcelo dos Reis on acoustic guitar, Luis Vicente on trumpet, and Kristjan Martinsson on piano. They work together to realize varying degrees of transparency and denseness, sound and silence.

Readers of this blog will no doubt recognize several of the names and may indeed be familiar with their improvising. This particular foursome is new to me as a unit, and so perhaps also to many of my readers. They are united in their directional zeal, each a layer in the whole and each segment also a layer.

What impresses on this set is the care with which each member contributes his/her part: the trumpet riding generally above in space, the guitar and piano in a sort of centering mode, the drums contributing texture and periodicity with a pronounced flourish much of the time.

Surely,  this is collective improvisation of a rarified sort, something FMR has been presenting to us so consistently, here yet further removed from anything expected but nonetheless directly communicating a sort of synesthesiatic analog of Ripkin's painting, spread out in time as much as space.

It is music made to contemplate, to run one's mental fingers over its aural surface, to experience a musically deep listen inside of. This is music an improv connoisseur will be instinctively drawn towards for its unrelenting eloquence. Those new or fairly new to ultra-modern improvisational music will doubtless find that patience and persistence will open up this music for you.

Explore this, by all means.