PHILLIP GOLUB

PARTISAN SHIP

Independent label

This is music that makes me feel as though I’ve been beamed up into a spaceship.  There is something other-worldly about Phillip Golub’s experimental music adventure. He is a composer, who is a multi-instrumentalist, as well as a lover of electronic artistic exploration.

His ensemble opens with “Loyalty Oath,” made up of concentric loops and electronic experimentation. The addition of a very jazzy clarinet solo brings interest to the experimental production. Now, instead of being strapped into the spaceship, I feel as though I’m whirling around in space, my hands outstretched to touch a passing star or tiny planet, attached to the ship by the drum lines of Jon Starks and Golub’s woodwind parts.

This song is followed by “Interlude (aboard),” one-minute and thirteen seconds of something that sounds like wind and perhaps a spaceship door opening to slide me back aboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtxR8-aYPNU

The title tune is full of flute and horn parts that bump against each other, speaking in a musical language, several instruments mimicking a political meeting, talking over each other.

One thing about this album that is perfectly beautiful is the amazing artwork design of the cover by Mario Lyne Fabrizio.  That album cover art would make me pick this CD up and examine it before I heard a note.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/r7pAvUCH2cs

If experimental music is your ‘thing,’ this is definitely one you should consider adding to your collection. Golub’s imagination and electronic techniques bring creativity to the table, like platters of delicious colors and soundscapes.

PHILLIP GOLUB BAND: Phillip Golub, Flexichord/Behringer Neutron/Arturia Digital Synths/Yuma Uesaka/clarinet/ bass clarinet/contrabass clarinet/tenor saxophone/bass/clariflute/ composer; Jon Starks, drums/ sensory percussion/snaps/drum machine; Sam Minaie, bass; Elias Stemeseder, Prophet VI/Moog Minitaur/modular Synths; Layale Chaker, 5-string violin; David Leon, alto saxophone; Anna Webber, flute/tenor saxophone; Amir ElSaffar, trumpet.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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