JASON MORAN, BLANKFOR.MS (TYLER GILMORE), MARCUS GILMORE

SHARDS

Red Hook Records

Jason Moran, piano; Marcus Gilmore, drums; BlankFor.ms (Tyler Gilmore), Electronics/tape loops/processing.

This album soars us into a matrix of trio performance and transformation. Two members of the trio are esteemed musicians and BlankFor.ms (aka: Tyler Gilmore) is a master engineer who adds electronics, tape looping and processing to the mix. They bend the tones and tempos, like “Shards” of light reflected through a cracked glass.

This is experimental music.  It paints various pictures with electronics and instrumental dialogue.  Some are quite beautiful, often the original compositions sounding like a suite of music, changing tempos and directions, bending tones and moods, mixing rhythm and interjecting lovely melodies that melt into rapid improvisation.  Like on the opening self-composed Shard 1., created spontaneously like every tune on this album, the music changes from jazzy improvisation, focused on the Marcus Gilmore driving drums, with Jason Moran’s piano fingers racing up and down the keyboard like track stars.  Their energy is contagious. Then, it switches to New Age chords and repetition.  They staccato dance across my listening room, and just when I’m getting bored with the repetition, the music transforms to something that sounds like a transistor radio signal. That remains constant in the background, while chords you might hear at church, or at a classical concert enter the arrangement. There is a feeling of ballad breath and peaceful beauty.  The earlier energy dissolves, flickering aways like fireflies against a dark sky, or “Shards” of light in a kaleidoscope.  The tune changes colors.

This entire album projects a feeling of weightlessness and space.  There is a sense of contemporary, space-age attitude, determined by three musical human beings who went into the studio and created something out-of-body, that mixes their various human histories, emotional experiences, talent and technology into a very unique and unexpected album. Their musical arrangements become “Shards” of creative thoughts, pulled together by artistic determination. They shake loose crumbs of creativity from vivid imaginations and feed them to the listener’s mind. I found myself slurping up those “Shards” of delicious, musical crumbs. “Shard III” is one of my favorite compositions, along with their interpretation of “Barbershop.”

My question is, will I ever taste these tunes again?  Since they are experimental and happened in the moment, do they play once and float away into the universe? Are they like grandma’s recipes, a woman who never measured anything?  Still, each plate was always delicious?  Here is music you may not taste the same way in those future, unexpected moments. But it still makes an impression on the palate.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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