Trying to Keep Up With Pianist Satoko Fujii’s Grey-Sky Majesty

What’s more amazing about Satoko Fujii‘s over eighty albums as a bandleader – that virtually all of them are worth owning? Or that she reached that epic number in about twenty years? It’s hard to imagine another artist building such a vast and consistently excellent, often transcendent body of work over that  timeline.

The pianist has always been ahead of her time, touring relentlessly, releasing an average of four records a year (a dozen in 2018, to celebrate her sixtieth birthday). She’s got a three-day series of New York shows coming up next month with her husband Natsuki Tamura, the world’s number one samurai extended-technique trumpeter. On Dec 13 at 8:30 PM at the Stone at the New School the two will be remixed live by a frequent collaborator, Ikue Mori; cover is $20. The-following night, Dec 14 at the same time Fujii and Tamura are at I-Beam for five bucks less. Then on the 15th at 8 they’re at 244’s Black Box Theatre, 244 West 54th St., 10th Flo, time TBA.

Fujii is neither a particularly dark nor political person – although her music is often brooding and troubled, she’s actually very funny. Ironically, her most harrowing album to date is one she conducted rather than played on, the Fukushima Suite, with her improvisational Orchestra New York. That reflection on the terror in the wake of the March 11, 2011 nuclear meltdowns earned the designation of #1 album of the year here in 2017. Considering her prolific output, it’s hard to pick a single record to get stoked for her Manhattan and Brooklyn shows, although one recent release, this past summer’s Confluence, a live-in-the-studio duo set with drummer Ramon Lopez, is especially good and arguably her most minimalist so far. It hasn’t made its way to the usual online spots yet.

The album’s first track, Asatsuyu has a close resemblance to the Twin Peaks title theme…only more interesting and unpredictable. Lopez uses his brushes to ice the background as Fujii builds variations on a simple, forlorn theme, up to a majestic, latin-tinged crescendo and gracefully down again.

Fujii goes under the piano lid, way down in the lows, as album’s most epic number, Road Salt gets underway. From there the two rise from a muted majesty to a steady series of catchy, loopy, emphatic phrases, a cautiously boomy drum solo and a hammering coda that reminds of the Police’s Synchronicity (speaking of synchronicity, just wait til you see what’s on this page in about 48 hours!).

Run! Is a fun, picturesque, scampering interlude, followed by Winter Sky, a surrealistically crescendoing tableau, Fujii both under the hood and on the keys as Lopez evokes hailstones and banks of snowclouds. Three Days Later, the album’s most gorgeous track, is an understatedly moody, spacious neoromantic theme, Lopez’s rumbles shadowing Fujii’s somber chords.

Fujii pairs a coy cathedral chime-like theme and then an unexpectedly austere, wintry melody with Lopez’s syncopation in Tick Down. The two cautiously lowlight the lingering atmospherics of Quiet Shadow and close out the album with the austere stillness of the title track. Although it’s probably safe to say that Fujii had a lot of these ideas in her head or a sketchbook by the time she recorded the album, most of this music was most likely made up on the spot.

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Jessie Kilguss Brings Her Subtly Sinister Songcraft and Soaring Voice to Gowanus Next Week

There was a four-song stretch in Jessie Kilguss‘ set last week at 11th Street Bar that was as evocative and mysteriously enticing as any show anywhere in New York this year. The first song was What Do Whales Dream About at Night, which was both enigmatic, and quirky, and had an ambitious sweep. Kilguss kept the jaws of fate open with Great White Shark, then sang the most haunting song of the night, The Master, one of the best of her folk noir masterpieces. Sinister as it seems, it’s actually a shout-out to Leonard Cohen, arguably Kilguss’ biggest influence

Then Kilguss and her jangly four-piece backing band careened through House of Rain and Leaves, a broodingly steady grey-sky narrative. With her calmly nuanced, crystalline voice soaring to the highs and murmuring among the lows, Kilguss channeled distant disaster and sudden menace as well as sardonic detachment. She knows that singing is acting, which makes sense since she built a career as a stage actress before plunging into songwriting more or less fulltime. She’s playing on an intriguing acoustic bill on Dec 4 at 7 PM at Mirror in the Woods, a tea shop at 575 Union St. in Gowanus. Take the R to Union St. and walk away from the slope. The other acts on the bill range from similarly strong tunesmiths like dark duo Lusterlit (Kilguss’ bandmates in lit-pop collective the Bushwick Book Club),, soulful cello-rocker Patricia Santos, Americana songstress Andi Rae Healy and some open mic lifers.

Kilguss’ other songs at the East Village show last week were subtler and somewhat more lighthearted. She opened, playing swaths of chords on harmonium, with Spain, a pensive blend of new wave and vintage soul and continued with Strangers, an opaque mix of Guided By Voices and Blondie, maybe. She closed the show with an unexpectedly upbeat Lori McKenna cover and then an almost completely deadpan take of a big radio hit from one of the most awful chick flicks of the 80s, a moment where nobody in the band could keep a straight face all the way through. Kilguss will probaby bring just as much angst, and menace, and ridiculous fun to the Brooklyn gig: it’s a pass-the-tip-jar situation.

Transcendent, Exhilarating, Haunting Iraqi Sounds at Roulette

For the past couple of years, impresarios Robert and Helene Browning have been booking a transcendentally good series of shows at Roulette, featuring artists from across the Middle East, Asia and North Africa. Those performances ought to be good: Robert Browning Associates have been doing this for over forty years, so they’ve built a vast talent base to draw from. While this season’s series of concerts is as wildly diverse as usual, the central theme this year is music from across the Arabic-speaking world. Saturday night’s show by impassioned Iraqi crooner Hamid Al-Saadi with Safaafir – this continent’s only classical Iraqi maqam ensemble – was as epic, and entrancing, and hauntingly relevant as any concert in New York this year.

They’d played at Lincoln Center this past March, and then a couple of times afterward, but this was a welcome opportunity to cut really cut loose. The Lincoln Center show featured songs that were somewhat shorter – ok, less than twenty or thirty minutes long – and seemed heavier on the more humorous material. But music from the Arabic-speaking diaspora is deep. In one haunting, dynamically rising and falling interlude at this show, Al-Saadi addressed the fleeting hope for relationship bliss, then the healing power of maqam riffage, then later the ever-present need to defeat occupying forces. You would expect no less from a socially aware narrative from Iraq from a century ago.

Al-Saadi’s voice is raw, often bristling with overtones: he holds back nothing. It was also in much better shape than at the Lincoln Center gig. Throughout this show, he’d either open a song with a big, resonant, potently melismatic crescendo, or he’d tease the audience (and his bandmates) to where he’d cut loose in the middle of a song.

Pretty much everybody else in the band sang along, or in a call-and-response. Bandleader Amir ElSaffar and his sister Dena – the world’s most talented brother-sister team – gave Al-Saadi an alternately slinky and pouncing groove. Tim Moore’s dynamic, slyly shapeshifting dumbek beat fueled the concert’s peaks, when George Ziadeh’s oud, Amir’s pointillistic santoor or Dena’s otherworldly, rain-drenched joza fiddle were going full steam. Solos tended to be tantalizingly short.

The concert followed a roller-coaster trajectory, punctuated by several breathtaking vocal peaks. The ensemble began rather enigmatically, then broodingly and expressively worked their way up from enigmatic modes that roughly corresponded to the western whole-tone scale, to a fiery couple of concluding numbers seething with chromatics, microtones and a desire to rid the world of invaders, whether Ottoman or British. The pair of women on backup vocals added layers of depth to an already lavish and searing blend of sounds.

The Brownings’ concert series at Roulette continues this Dec 7 at 8 PM with legendary Javanese bandleader I. M. Harjito directing Gamelan Kusuma Laras in a program of rippling, hypnotic traditional bell orchestra sounds; general admission is $30.

Yet Another Wildly Diverse Album From the Brilliantly Psychedelic, Lyrical Sometime Boys

The Sometime Boys are a rarity in the world of psychedelic music: a lyrically-driven band fronted by a charismatic woman with a shattering, powerful wail. Guitarist/singer Sarah Mucho cut her teeth in the cabaret world, winning prestigious MAC awards….when she wasn’t belting over loud guitars as an underage kid out front of the funky, enigmatic Noxes Pond, a popular act at the peak of what was an incredibly fertile Lower East Side rock scene back in the early zeros. Noxes Pond morphed into volcanically epic art-rock band System Noise, one of the best New York groups of the past decade or so, then Mucho and lead guitarist Kurt Leege went in a more acoustic, Americana-flavored direction with the Sometime Boys.

They earned the #1 song of the year here back in 2014 for their hauntingly crescendoing, gospel-fueled anthem The Great Escape. Their new album The Perfect Home – streaming at Bandcamp – is a mind-warpingly diverse collection of originals and covers. There aren’t many other bands capable of making the stretch between a country-flavored take of the Supersuckers’ deadpan, cynical Barricade and a similarly wry hard-funk cover of the Talking Heads’ Houses in Motion.

The other covers are a similarly mixed bag. Mucho’s angst-fueled, blues-drenched delivery over guest Mara Rosenbloom’s organ and the slinky rhythm section of bassist Pete O’Connell and drummer Jay Cowit takes the old Allman Brothers southern stoner standard Whipping Post to unexpected levels of intensity, Likewise, Pink Floyd’s Fearless has a bounce missing from the art-folk original on the Meddle album, along with a balmy, wise, nuanced vocal from Mucho and a starry, swirly jam at the end. And their slinky, gospel-influenced take of Tom Waits’ Way Down in the Hole is a clinic in erudite, purist blues playing.

But the album’s best songs are the originals. Unnatural Disasters has careening, Stonesy stadium rock over a bubbly groove and a characteristically sardonic but determined lyric from Mucho. The group are at their most dizzyingly eclectic on the European hit single Architect Love Letter, blending elements of bluegrass, soukous, honkytonk and an enveloping, dreampop-flavored outro.

Leege’s mournful washes of slide guitar, Rosenbloom’s pointillistic electric piano and Mucho’s brooding, gospel-tinged vocals mingle over a nimble bluegrass shuffle beat in Painted Bones. And the defiance and hard-won triumph in Mucho’s voice in the feminist anthem Women of the World – a snarling mashup of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Poi Dog Pondering, maybe – is a visceral thrill. Good to see one of New York’s most original, distinctive bands still going strong. They’re just back from European tour; watch this space for upcoming hometown shows.

Fresh New Interpretations and Dazzling Technique from Conrad Tao at Carnegie Hall

Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, pianist Conrad Tao delivered a performance that offered a glimpse of an unselfconscious bon vivant sensibility along with daunting, world-class chops and and frequently astonishing insight into a very diverse program.

Tao played with such precision and and evenness of attack that even the night’s most staccato passages had fluidity. He leveraged the thrill factor with an old orchestral trick, beginning pieces or developing themes from a whispery pianissimo so that when things got loud, they seemed even louder. But what was most impressive is that he’d spent a lot of time under the hood with these works, figuring out exactly what makes them purr…or roar.

He opened with David Lang‘s Cage [sorry dude, titles are capitalized around here], a brisk study in single-note counterpoint and a shout-out to the famously silent American composer. Tao’s matter-of-factness and exactitude enhanced the music’s hypnotic feel: others might not have played this as a nocturne, and that’s their loss.

Others also definitely would not have played Bach’s Tocccata in F Sharp minor, BWV 910 with as much spaciousness, and dynamics, and probably with less or even none of the judicious rubato that Tao would return to again and again throughout the evening. But in so doing, he revealed the love ballad at the heart of the work, its fondly jubilant righthand melody cleverly cached amid the composer’s outwardly morphing phrases. Obviously, Bach on the piano is inevitably going to be iconoclastic: this was as rewarding to hear as it must have been fun to play, Tao gritting his teeth and raising his eyebrows as the web grew more complex.

Another work that got even more time under the microscope, as far as extracting every ambitious flicker of modernity, was Rachmaninoff’s Etude-Tableau in A minor, Op. 39, no. 2. Harmonically, it’s almost shockingly more adventurous than the rest of those relatively brief High Romantic iano pieces, most of which he wrote in the 1890s. This one dates from 1917, foreshadowing where he’d go with the Third Piano Concerto and its incessantly shapeshifting jazz-influenced rhythms and flourishes.

Tao delivered Julia Wolfe‘s Earring with acerbity and meticulous, often pointillistic rhythm. There seemed to be a man-versus-machine narrative prefiguring her John Henry suite; here, the machine grew more and more human, with a belltone poignancy. To close the first half of the evening, Tao returned to Lang for another 1990s composition, Wed, an increasingly plaintive, restless, frequently carrilonesque ballad written as a salute to a couple who got married while the bride lay dying in the hospital.

The centerpiece of the second half of the program was a breathtakingly expressive and fresh performance of Schumann’s Kreisleriana. Counterintuitively, the high point was also the quietest section, awash in resonant, lingering phrases, the contrast even greater considering how fast Tao had scampered, if not particularly loudly, through the introduction. Lilting cantabile passages stood out amid minor-key unease and a dance that seemed not only rather Russian but almost phantasmagorical, as Tao worked the dynamics up and down, all the way through to a puckish coda.

There were a couple of misfires too. It’s one thing to program a study in spastic/resonant contrasts, but two? At least the Jason Eckart piece eventually wound down to a blackly suspenseful reflecting pool…but getting there, as the rhythm was epileptically jerked around any time the music could have coalesced, was torture. Which is not to say that ugly music can’t be meaningful or impactful, but this could have made its point in a tenth the time, never mind the Elliott Carter piece it was paired with. And the mawkishly inept freak-folk of Daniel Johnston is no less artless or awkward at Carnegie Hall than it would be on open mic night at any grungy, overpriced Bushwick beardo bar.

Rare Intimacy with the King of Calypso, the Mighty Sparrow at Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center impresario Viviana Benitez introduced Thursday night’s show by the Mighty Sparrow with a quote from a recent interview he’d given to Vivien Goldman. The octogenarian king of calypso had explained succinctly that singularity is no longer the order of the day, and that if there’s ever been a time for the people to unite, this is it.

That’s as political as he got. With his powerful, protean baritone as colorful as ever and his usual outrageous sense of humor, he led an exuberant, eight-piece New York backing unit through a set of classics from throughout his seventy-year career. Calypso and soca lyrics often have a powerful social awareness, but this show was packed mostly with scampering, irrepressibly devious, innuendo-driven dance tunes. It’s hard to imagine Bob Marley’s 1970s work, dancehall reggae toasters like Yellowman, or for that matter a lot of hip-hop, without Sparrow paving the way.

The brief Q&A before the show set the tone. With his signature blend of sagacity and deadpan wit, Sparrow was as funny when he deflected a question as when he was willing to offer an answer. “I remember your music being very sexual for that time,” a Caribbean woman a few decades younger asserted, before inquiring whether or not he writes his own songs. Sparrow didn’t answer, didn’t move a muscle, as chuckles broke out among the crowd. Later, asked if he had a favorite song, he declared he didn’t think he’d ever done one he didn’t like, which spoke volumes for the performance.

The night’s funniest number was Pussycat, with harmony singers Erica Smith and Rembert Block coyly punching in on the refrain “Afraid pussy bite me.” The song is all the more classic for being completely G-rated. Sparrow’s so afraid of this little kitty that he’s never going to touch pussy again – but wait, some pussy doesn’t have teeth. And by the way, who got the scissors to cut pussy’s whiskers?

The salsa-spiced Sparrow Dead was just as amusing in a completely different way, flipping the script on anyone who’d dare hate on a legend. Thinly veiled, suggestive references were everywhere, from the tongue-in-cheek Mr. Walker,, to the sardonic No Money No Love, to the thunderingly macho Congo Man. and finally the witheringly cynical, anti-imperialist 1956 hit Jean and Dinah. The whole massive knew the words and sang along lustily.

The band rose to the occasion, bouncing and bubbling. Pianist Phillip Nichols provided some lushly neoromantic solo intros along with a lot of driving, Cuban-influenced lines alongside lead guitarist Lane Steinberg,, acoustic guitarist Dave Foster, Louis Fouche on sax, Tom DeVito on drums and reggae legend Larry McDonald on percussion. The womens’ harmonies – Smith’s jazz nuance and megawatt smile contrasting with the more cabaret-influenced Block’s calm but brassy presence – raised the music’s steamy energy to tropical temperatures.

The Mighty Sparrow’s next New York appearance is at Joe’s Pub on Dec 7 at 7 PM; tix are $25. The mostly-weekly free concert series at the Lincoln Center atrium space on Broadway just north of 62nd St. continues with a rare Tuesday show tomorrow night, Nov 26 at 7: 30 PM featuring Afro-Cuban pianist Dayramir González & Habana enTRANCé. Smith and Foster are also playing with one of their other projects, the Gershwin Brothers, opening for a concert performance of Block’s new opera at the Treehouse at 2A at 9 PM on Dec 8.

Grim, Haunting Lyricism and Strange Synchronicity from Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith

One of this year’s most strangely riveting albums is Mummer Love, by Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith, streaming at Bandcamp. What’s strangest is that its juxtapositions of what would ordinarily seem to be jarringly dissimilar styles of music – sufi chants, minimalist piano music and vintage motorik disco – actually work well together in this context, especially as far as creating hypnotic atmosphere is concerned. And the texts – by Arthur Rimbaud and Smith, who contributes the title track – are shatteringly, relentlessly elegaic.

To open the album, Mulatu Astatke sings Aw Abadir, hushed, low and a-cappella. Philip Glass plays spacious, lightly processed, deep-space piano chords and accents on La Maison de Rimbaud, a mashup of two completely separate tracks, with the steadily fervent Sufi Group of Sheikh Ibrahim encroaching further into the sonic picture. As the piano drifts further and further into minimalism, found sounds – birdsong, street noise, a microvave oven maybe? – coyly flit through the tableau.

The sufis’ gnawa-like call-and-response and Smith’s brightly anticipatory voice get cut and pasted over Glass’ low-key, circling electric piano loop in Eternity, a propulsive motorik groove. Song of the Highest Tower is much the same, but with what appear to be sampled animalian snorts and more enigmatic poetry from Smith: “Just say let go, disappear, without hope of greater joy.”

The title track, a ten-minute rainscape, is Smith at her shattering, existentialist best. “I long to hear that which I have made and then outlive it.” she declares. “I will board a ship with you, a ship to Abyssinia, to descend into the abyss, black hole of universal love.” It gets even better later:

…A visible ink peeling at the edge of my cheek
I danced at the edge of ignorance
I wept impossble dreams
I have melted nothing
I have stood in the warped curve of a life
That should have taken me away
But left me with humankind that I have never been
Everything here is a small offense
Is an attempt to peel another putrid skin
I’ll be ok
Go away

In Farewell, a steady, quasi trip-hop groove slowly emerges as Smith intones Rimbaud’s harrowing self-penned obituary:

I tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues
I thought I wa acquiring supernatural powers
Well
I must bury my imagination and my memories
An artist storyteller’s precious fame flung away
I called myself Angel
Or Seer
Exempt from all morality
I am returned to the soil with a duty to seek
And a rough reality to embrace
Peasant
Peasant
Am I mistaken?
Will charity be the sister of death for me?
At last I shall ask forgiveness
For having fed on lies
Now
Let’s go

Glass plays his signature, glistening arpeggios in tandem with the call-and-response chants of Bad Blood. The album comes full circle with Sensation, a summertime tableau, Glass and Astatke’s contrasting keyboard textures mingling above a steady shuffling acoustic beat. Fans of every style on this record – North African music, serious concert music and ferocious lyricism – will not be disappointed. Look for this on the best albums of 2019 list here at the end of the year.

Sarah Pagé Plays Hypnotically Catchy, Shimmery Psychedelia on the Concert Harp

From the droning oscillations of the title track of Sarah Pagé’s new album Dose Curves, growing increasingly metallic, shedding overtones like a circular saw cutting sheet metal, it’s hard to imagine how she could create such a vortex with a harp. Electronics are obviously a big part of the picture; still, this collection of instrumental nocturnes – streaming at Bandcamp – is one of the most imaginative psychedelic records in recent memory.

From the opening drone, Pagé segues into the hypnotically loopy, austerely folky Stasis:, reverb way up in the mix, her spacious plucking sometimes resembling a steel guitar, sometimes an Indian veena.

Simple, organ-like pitch-shifting harmonies permeate Lithium Taper, all the way through to a teenage wasteland of the harp (old people who listen to “classic rock” radio will get that joke). Rippling without a pause into Ephemeris, she loops a galloping phrase and builds constellations of bright, tersely attractive riffage around it. Ever wonder if a harp could echo like a Fender Rhodes piano? Here’s your answer.

The album closes with Pagé’s most epic cut, Pleaides, a softly pulsing deep-space raga, akin to a sitar drifting gently further and further from earth to the point where the vastness becomes terrifying. This isn’t just great atmospheric music: it’s great Indian music. What a strange and beautiful record.

Tschaikovsky for a Winter Afternoon

If you’re considering a splurge on the post-Thanksgiving, 2 PM Nov 30 matinee performance of Tschaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 by the NY Philharmonic, it’s probably a good idea. Music Director Jaap Van Zweden is back, and he and the orchestra excel with Rachmaninoff, so this also could be sublime. Tix are pricy: $34 will get you in. The Mozart Wind Serenade in E flat might seem like an odd piece to start the show, but Van Zweden has a knack for making sense of seemingly bizarre segues.

And if you’re looking for a way to warm up for the concert, there’s an excellent, characteristically epic new recording of Tschaikovsky’s Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5 just out from the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev and streaming at Spotify. Make no mistake about it, this is heavy music: Swan Lake it is not, although it also isn’t completely dark.

The delicately brooding bassoon-and-strings lament that bookends the first movement’s stern, angst-fueled waltz and blustery, swirling crescendos will be a recurrent trope. Likewise, Gergiev and the ensemble stay low to the ground in the grimly murky atmospherics that wind up the first movement, and the melancholy horn melody that opens the second. Mournful bassoon and clarinet eventually rise warily, but not that far. When the plucky basses introduce a secondary theme, that’s a big message, foreshadowing a sudden jolt from nocturnal contentment to sheer horror.

The lickety-split counterpoint of the third movement is downright furtive, and closure doesn’t quite happen with the relative calm of the waltz afterward. For that we have to wait til the triumphant lustre and unexpected, jovial majesty of the finale. And ultimately, it’s too pat: happiness just busting through the clouds without the slightest warning?

So the album’s piece de resistance is the gloomy cumulo-nimbus Russian gothic Symphony No. 4, the opening track. The obvious model is Beethoven’s Fifth, and there are riffs everywhere that Rachmaninoff nicked and took to their logical conclusions with his Second Symphony. The angst police show up with a fanfare; strings sweep down like a flock of vultures, relentlessly; that bassoon and clarinet again!

Momentary cheer gets strutted off to trial or shadowed by a stalker or three. Desolation on some barren steppe gets maximum grandeur. What another orchestra might do as a ballet all the way through, this group introduce as phantasmagoria. Gergiev and the orchestra finally reach Eldorado in the rapidfire overture of the finale, filling the sonic picture, floor to ceiling: they get this troubled masterpiece.

A Challenging, Relevant New Album From Avant Garde Piano Titan Kathleen Supove

Kathleen Supove is not only the most virtuosically dazzling pianist to emerge from the downtown New York scene of the 1980s; she’s also a champion of some of the most individualistic composers of the past few decades. Her new album Eye to Ivory, a collection of five world premiere recordings, is streaming at Bandcamp. She’s playing the album release show on Nov 24 at 3 PM at Spectrum; cover is $15

She opens the album’s title track, by Mary Ellen Childs, with a stern, grimly marching lefthand, adding increasingly cynical, emphatic righthand accents. Ghostly flickers can’t derail this stomping steam train even as it slows to an echoey pause. Supove’s legendary technique comes front and center with the insistently challenging staccato of the second movement. A stygian, deadpool call-and-response is followed by a lively contrapuntal waltz and a twisted, increasingly savage boogie – the dystopic ELO classic From the Sun to the World taken to the next level. The menace rises with the sun over Supove’s chillingly minimalist, looped righthand.

Akin to a slowly melting ice sculpture, the late Nick Didkovsky’s slow, Terry Riley-ish Rama Broom has slowly increasing, Debussy-esque activity over subtle variations on a hypnotic fifth interval anchored by a lingering low A note. There’s also a cut-and-pasted spoken word component: dread seems to be the central theme, which makes sense when you reach the end. No spoilers here, ha!

Talkback IV, by Guy Barash, is an electroacoustic piece, echoey phrases disintegrating into distortion amid eerie insistence and flailing chaos. A caricaturish march emerges, only to dissolve into a hammering reflecting pool. Likewise, an echoey calm following a return to belltone disquiet is subsumed in persistent atonalities.

Randall Woolf’s nine-part suite In the Privacy of My Own Home makes its point, although it could be shorter. Everyone who’s not living in a cave (or glued to a screen 24/7) is aware of how the confluence of the surveillance state and social media imperils us. Here, an attractively uneasy, slowly unfolding series of loopy riffs contrast with samples of laughs, sighs, gasps and a burp or three. Yes, TMI is ugly: yes, the pornification of even the most mundane moments is too.  For what it’s worth, Supove negotiates the piece’s tricky metrics with an agile aplomb.

Supove closes the album with Dafna Naphtali’s Landmine, a dissociative, occasionally creepy four-part electroacoustic suite. Mechanical, Louis Andriessen-style staccato accents and an increasingly ominous belltone melody mingle with split-second bursts of various timbres, sometimes like a scan of a busy radio dial. Although there are no explosive moments until more than midway through, everything does get blown to shreds here.