By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring the free chamber jazz of Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe, and Patrick Shiroishi’s SPEAK, MOMENT, and Flesh Tape’s current sounding self-titled noise rocker!
Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe, Patrick Shiroishi – SPEAK, MOMENT
Genre: Chamber Jazz, Free Improvisation
Favorite Tracks: “Staring Into The Imagination (Of Your Face),” “How To Draw Buildings,” “Return In 100 Years, The Colors Will Be At Their Peak”
Recorded in a single afternoon, SPEAK, MOMENT never allows itself the time to think about what’s happening next. The trio of saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, drummer Max Jaffe,and guitarist Dave Harrington all come from backgrounds in the world of freely drawn, sensitively arranged improvisational music, and it’s their immediate connection performing with one another that makes the album’s five tracks so revelatory. Grounded in the calm waters of dreamy, ECM-esque jazz periodically flooded by waves of extended instrumental techniques and shiver-inducing noise sections, SPEAK, MOMENT fades in and out of view more than it forms into a singular structure. It’s an exceptionally warm and welcoming album compared to most other free improv albums, avoiding the excessive harshness and intensity often associated with the genre, creating an experience that is both unique and instantly familiar to anyone invested in the modern experimental scene. SPEAK, MOMENT courses with immense energy, but the trio never feel inclined to harness all of it at once.
The softer, sweeter tracks are where SPEAK, MOMENT shines the most. “Staring Into the Imagination (Of Your Face)” opens the album with soft brush drumming and gentle, melodic alto lines walking the line between relaxed improvisation and the tension of vibrato and harmonic overtones, Harrington’s thoughtful guitar additions playing off Shiroishi’s ideas, giving your ear another texture to grab onto. “How To Draw Buildings” does much of the same, but has a greater focus on the thunderous possibilities of Harrington’s effect pedals and the “Sensory Percussion” stylings of Jaffe, rolling across his entire kit as his toms and cymbals come to embody a rolling storm over the horizon Shiroishi’s saxophone playing later tries to tame. There are few extra additions made in post to these performances—Shiroishi doubles saxophone lines in the bitter and glitchy “Ship Rock”; fluid synths plod about the tail-end of album single “Dance Of The White Shadow and Golden Kite” alongside Harrington’s moody guitar work. But the exposed frameworks of SPEAK, MOMENT get you invested in nothing more than the relationship the trio have with one another, and that alone powers it all the way through.
A masterful release from the trio and another excellent album to release on AKP Records, SPEAK, MOMENT keeps in the tradition of jammy, improvisational music while outfitting it with the trio’s individual stylings. It’s an instantly impressive and immediately replayable album that rewards patience and an ear of steel for all the small details and embellishments made throughout. Shiroishi, Jaffe, and Harrington are all in prime moments of their artistic careers—Shiroishi’s incredible solo output the past few years along with his work in chamber jazz quartet Fuubutsushi and brutal prog duo Oort Smog; Jaffe’s angular drumming and keyboard contributions to avant-pop quartet JOBS and exemplary live performances; Harrington’s gorgeous Nicolás Jaar duo Darkside putting out some of the most futuristic rock in recent years, his sprawling 2023 release The Pictures remaining one of my personal favorites with its gorgeous blends of ambient jazz, americana, and exotica. And for all three of them SPEAK, MOMENT has become yet another fantastic entry to all of their discographies. SPEAK, MOMENT is available to stream and purchase, digitally or on vinyl, on their Bandcamp. [Lurien Zitterkopf]
Flesh Tape – S/T
Genre: Noise Rock, Shoegaze
Favorite Tracks: “Gargoyle,” “Time You Don’t Have,” “Sunny”
Much ink has been spilled and re-spilled on this current era of shoegazing slowcore, a sound that is absolutely having some kind of moment in both indie circles and with mainstream audiences. For my money, none have captured this moment better than Eli Enis’s piece for Stereogum, an American framing of the moment that could’ve just as likely been published yesterday instead of December of 2022: “…a rush of new blood has led to an exciting new era of bands who are returning to shoegaze’s artier side and making music that definitively doesn’t sound expensive. Scrappy, curious, and unmoored from shoegaze’s eurocentric DNA, bands like They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, Full Body 2, Wednesday, Feeble Little Horse, Knifeplay, A Country Western, Hotline TNT, Greet Death, MJ Lenderman, and Bedlocked sound like the genre’s future.”
Even a year and change after the publishing of the piece, I think it’s safe to say Enis was proven immediately right—Wednesday released many a publication’s album of the year, feeble little horse are on the Coachella lineup, Hotline TNT signed to Third Man, and TAGABOW might be the most well-traveled band working in indie rock today. And in some way, this “moment” is about to be spiritually celebrated in Philly with Nothing’s stacked GUILT OF EVERYTHING anniversary show, itself the kind of event that feels destined to be discussed years and years now.
For as much ink as I’m re-re-spilling on this wave of American shoegaze, I want to take a moment and highlight working class rockers Flesh Tape, whose self-titled debut impressively stands out in a crowded sea of wannabe Flesner types and swirly hardcore hopefuls. Songwriter Larson Ross told the Alternative that at one point, FLESH TAPE was meant to be a concept album about, among other things, “the idea of molding yourself to a machine that then falls out of use due to economic whim.” You can hear those themes still echoing throughout, both in the lyrics and sonically. There is a dark warmth that radiates off their hissing, speckled fuzz; the cradling, rhythmic hum of opener “Horizon, Pt. 1” sets the tone for an album that keeps moving forward for better or worse, each song tapping into a hypnotically coarse style of noise rock that is at once beautiful, optimistic, devastating, and exhausted. It’s important as we experience those things in tandem that we focus on the former and don’t give in to the latter, no matter how big or mundane or all-encompassing our problems become, and Ross uses FLESH TAPE to explore all of it. It’s an impressive collection that, if you’re into this current moment of music, shouldn’t be missed. Check it out on Bandcamp. [CJ Simonson]
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