More Touch (Pyroclastic)
Patricia Brennan
Released November 2022
New York City Jazz Record Best Latin Releases of 2022
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lujcsOk2De39a22Bwg1TP4BNpDxEzOlTU
Spotify:
About:
On her new album More Touch, vibraphonist, marimbist and composer Patricia Brennan – whose debut landed on the New York Times list of Best Jazz Albums of 2021 – reimagines the percussion quartet through jazz, new music, and Mexican folkloric influences.
Joining her are internationally renowned drummer Marcus Gilmore, percussionist Mauricio Herrera, and bassist Kim Cass, More Touch expands brilliantly on the singular vocabulary showcased on Brennan’s solo debut. Enhancing the resonant beauty and percussive melodicism of the vibraphone and marimba with extended techniques and subtle electronic manipulation, Brennan employs an expansive sonic palette that blurs the lines between progressive jazz and contemporary classical music.
On More Touch, she bridges tradition and innovation by drawing influences from the Afro-Cuban and Son Jarocho traditions – and their attendant improvisatory practices – of her native Mexico.
Track Listing:
1. Unquiet Respect 5:54
2. More Touch 7:47
3. Space For Hour 14:51
4. El Nahualli (The Shadow Soul) 5:16
5. The Woman Who Weeps 5:31
6. Square Bimagic 5:49
7. Convergences 6:32
8. Robbin 10:13
9. Sizigia (Syzygy) 5:10
10. And There Was Light 3:39
All compositions by Patricia Brennan
Personnel:
Marcus Gilmore: drums
Mauricio Herrera: percussion
Kim Cass: bass
Patricia Brennan: vibraphone with electronics, marimba
Recorded March 31 & April 1, 2022 at Oktaven Audio, Mt Vernon, NY, by Ron Saint Germain & Ryan Streber
Mixed by Ron Saint Germain at Saint’s Place
Mastered by Scott Hull, Masterdisk, Peekskill, NY
Band photography by Frank Heath
Design & layout by Spotswood Erving and July Creek for Janky Defense Produced by David Breskin
Review:
It’s uncanny how More Touch, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan‘s scarily good follow-up to her head-turning debut Maquishti (Valley of Search, 2021) follows one around all day. Its essence is in the air, in the room, in the conversation. It sneaks around the corner and races down the stairs, out into the street, and breaks into any and all of the machinations that drive the day.
Born of its own fevered animation, the music on More Touch is brazen. Atmospheric yet as visceral as a meteor collision. It balances and sizzles. It buzzes. Settles and unsettles. Runs vertically and horizontally. It bellydances while it sambas. Rhythmic collages such as “Robbin” and “The Woman Who Weeps” slide and tumble, coursing through their own logic and fundamentals like full-on lava flows.
Connecting the interstices between free improv and classical chamber with a great deal of Afro-Cuban polyrhythms in between, Brennan, taking turns at vibraphone and marimba (while manipulating both electronically to dreamy, spacey effect) whispers, purrs, roars. Drummer Marcus Gilmore, percussionist Mauricio Herrera and bassist Kim Cass whip up their own sense of tempo and margin, resulting in such torrents of concentrated hypnosis as “Space For Hour,” the swirling, spiraling “Square Bimagic,” the diasporic “Convergences,” the warped whispers of “More Touch,” and the pulsing, free-spirited “Unquiet Respect.”
It is a testament to Cass that he can keep this often runaway train on the tracks. As the three percussionists bounce off the sonic palette to all corners of the unknown, Cass runs down the middle, holding it all together. It is no mean feat by any standard. Prolific in their imaginings, Gilmore and Herrera provide a roiling landscape one minute, then pull it away the next, enabling Brennan to countermand and reciprocate, often simultaneously. It is another neat treat on a disc of neat tricks. Maquishti turned a lot of people on to Brennan’s unique geometric stance and shadings. More Touch is just as captivating.
Mike Jurkovic (All About Jazz)
