Weds, 11 Jun 2025 @ Solar Myth, Philadelphia.
Dan Weiss, drums
Miles Okazaki, guitar
Patricia Brennan, vibes
Peter Evans, trumpet
Touring in support of the newly released Unclassified Affections (Bandcamp), which is (as most everything on the Pi label) excellent.
Decent and attentive turnout for a Wednesday night in Philly.
I once read a review of David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” saying that the best way to watch it was to understand that for Lynch, the focus was on staging and lighting design, not plot and character. During this show I had a similar thought about this collection of music, where the handling of meter and tempo are as much in the foreground as any of the pitch or harmonic concerns. Watching a band that can both be playing extremely loosely and still nail intricate details like the sudden section changes here will never not be thrilling.
All the players were playing at their top – I’ve seen Patricia Brennan playing in a bunch of different groups in the past few years, and she’s always a treat to listen to; wonderful technique applied tastefully.
The trumpet player Peter Evans was new to me; I need to check his work out more deeply. Really interesting note choices throughout his solos, and he also brought along a bag of tricks that I’d put just on this side of being extended techniques on the instrument. One piece in particular required him to circular breathe while playing an extended repeated phrase that was filled with octave jumps; it had to be exhausting. I have no idea if it was intentional, but on the tune “Holotype”, both in terms of timbre and overall approach to the piece, I was reminded of Markus Stockhausen’s playing on an old ECM recording Aparis. That may just be because I’ve been listening to a lot of Stockhausen in the last year or so.
My third show at Solar Myth since moving here, and I’m still adjusting to the ease of doing things like this here after decades in the Jersey suburbs.
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