Sam Wenc - Language at an Angle (Lobby Art) [Jazz / Experimental]

Sam Wenc is a force for alternative and independent music good. As well as being an accomplished, boundary probing/hammering composer, improviser and interdisciplinary artist he co-runs the excellent Lobby Art Editions, which has turned me onto so many interesting artists, and whose releases have regularly appeared in the blog and playlists. If that wasn't enough he also manages Mississipi Records, which alongside its stellar archival work, has had a similar impact on TSMM - remember The Cosmic Tones Research Trio?

Language at an Angle also marks the second of Wenc's post-Post Moves' releases after finally burying the moniker and deciding to come out of the pseudonymous closet, and it's an uncompromising, collective affair. Alongside Wenc on pedal steel, vibraphone, tapes, metallaphones, cymbals, banjo and guitar are the talents of Sam Yulsman on piano, Will Henriksen playing violin, Stefano Grasso's percussion, Matthew Lee and Jack Braunstein contributing clarinet and he even dragged down Roman Norfleet of The Cosmic Tones Research Trio from Portland to Philadelphia to drop some sax on "Staying", it's quite the production.

The tone of the album was honed during Wenc's far flung live performances and very much retains that up close improvisatory energy, alternately floating through or piercing the speakers depending on his whim. There's certainly long periods of calm, apparently rooted in Wenc's fondness for meditation, but an appreciation for inner peace and life's quieter moments, doesn't mean he hasn't got anything to shout about, and who can blame him these days?

A bowed helicopter hovers over the gently building stop start introduction to "Limitless of Blue" - the album opener, before skittering jazz percussion announces the first crescendo, an odd fusion of pleasantly uneasy spiritual inquisitiveness that melts into an ambient void, paving the way nicely for the minimal, improvised ambient interlude of, "Draw Water Down". A snidey guitar motif nags its way through the intro and then underpins a vaguely grooving jazz flourish on "Blue Consonance", before the quivering, pulsing mid-album post rock peak, "Run The River Clear" is bookended by the cinematic suspense of, "Clear of Itself".

The second half of the album, perhaps reflecting on the first half outbursts, chooses a more contemplative path, Wenc sending in a soothing drone, then some temple bells and chimes on "Threshold Arises" to announce the change of mood. The track even adopts a blissful spiritual vibe, well, until a stray banjo upsets the equilibrium and the track spirals into electronic oblivion. The more sedate mood, although not quite stress free, is revived on "Staying" as the pedal steel and harmonica wonder what happened to the American(a) dream and the more jazz inclined musicians search for spiritual guidance in the darkness. "Caught String" then rounds things off nicely with its sunny spiritual jazz air just winning the day over the edgier bowed clouds and insistent bell to round off this mighty fine, improvisatory roller coaster very nicely.

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Playlist Companion

Find Wenc in the Slow Oddities Playlist.