#improvised

Sympathetic improviser, modal mystic, and experimental soundscaper Landon Caldwell unveiled a new project earlier this year in collaboration with Moon Glyph, which saw the artist remotely leading an amorphous collective called Flower Head Ensemble. The result was a stunning display of ambient jazz spirituality, built almost entirely from chance and guided by pure intuition. Indeed, to craft the three slabs of sonic delirium occupying Simultaneous Systems—as well as the two side-longs on the Companion Environ tape released recently on the artist’s own Medium Sound—Caldwell sent each of his collaborators morphing and minimal soundbaths, over which they added sax, drums, strings, synth, and mallet instruments completely independently of one another. With this cache of primordial sonic matter, Caldwell then sculpted and shaped extended pieces of ethereal beauty and esoteric magic…pieces that feel so complete, and move with such grace and purpose, that it is hard to believe the contributors weren’t all in the same room riding the vibe together. Sounds merge and combine effortlessly, with vibraphones gleaming, horns screaming, and drums moving mysteriously underneath, sometimes rustling through windswept whispers, other times exploding into chaotic free jazz cacophony. Organ drones, e-piano dreamspells, polyphonic pads, and alien Moog modulations swim around in drunken seas of ether, flowing back and forth between serenity and intensity, and through it all, string instruments pluck, saw, and sigh, with tones ever-obscured by blinding glimmers of feedback. The result is something akin to both free and spiritual jazz, but that also takes in psychedelic minimalism, drone-based ambient, and experimental post-rock, with an overall feel that—at least to my ears—wouldn’t be out of place in the catalogs of early Kranky and Constellation, VHF, and of course, the legendary ECM. 

Landon Caldwell & Flower Head Ensemble - Simultaneous Systems (Moon Glyph, 2021)
At the start of “Reaching Out,” bell tones and trap kit motions decay through cavernous spaces, while the echoing horns of Mac Blackout (alto sax), Tom Lageveen (alto sax), and Nick Yeck-Stauffer (trumpet) spin romantic fanfares before swelling into ecstatic walls of sound. Chimes twinkle within the droning miasma, and subtle themes begin taking shape, with horns blowing in unison, plucked strings riding phaserwaves, and keys letting loose smoldering blues incantations. Tambourine splashes and sleigh bell shimmers grow in strength as bowed instruments generate blinding sprays of feedback, and having disappeared for a stretch, the horns eventually reemerge, with trumpet and violin singing songs of elegiac Americana in a way reminiscent of Jackie-O Motherfucker and their free folk/jazz odyssey Fig. 5. Bass synths accent Thom Nguyen’s drums as they sputter in the shadows, with tapped rides radiating golden vapors, and rimshots interspersing with junkyard percussion. K. Dylan Edrich’s strings continue asserting themselves through layers of splattered rhythm and dissonant synthetics, and at certain moments, the vibe is akin to the mighty orchestrations of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, only as if playing a shambling drone paean to the spirits of sun and sky. Brass swells bleat and blear into shamanic fire…into a purifying light that descends over an unsettled sea of organ droning, with tones otherworldly in their abandonment of melody…like waves of rainbow light mutating and modulating through a ceremonial storm of improvisation. Something approaching a defined drum beat emerges, with cymbal sizzles holding a count and broken kick and snare patterns ever-evolving. Trumpet and alto blow cosmic mysteries across the spectrum as the vibe approaches abstracted noir…like viewing a sunset cityscape through a fever dream fog. The rhythms continue their active ascent as Nguyen rolls around the kit in a physical display of force, and all the while, phasing keyboard chords grow ever more distorted…as if threatening to pull the track towards the sinister. Yet the horn trio contrasts the darkness with purifying baths of sonic light and longform melodic mysteries that eventually fade to nothingness. And by the end, all that remains are boiling bodies of organ drone and cymbal taps that sparkle like diamonds.

“Life Underground” opens the B-side with chords reducing to a metalloid haze, and repetitions of noise that are at once harsh and soft. There is a vague air of melancholy underlying the introductory movements, and eventually, gemstone keys reflect the light of a creeping dawn. Liquid swells wash the mix clean and waves of deep droning blue cascade over the body while alien fluids drip all around, and as Edrich’s strings fight again through layers of blinding drone, wild winds whip up a roaring vortex of sound. Keys evoke childhood music box meditations, rapidly bowed strings flutter like insect wings, and subsuming midtone drones push towards feedback while horns swell in the distance…their majestic melodies and waves of warmth uplifting the heart. Viols morph into displays of solar light and Yeck-Stauffer alights on shrieking solo adventures…his slithering and slip sliding trumpet leads moving in and out focus amidst resonant bell tones and the monosynth buzz of Mark Tester’s Moog. A symphony seems to swoon in the background ether as pounding bass patterns emerge, eventually revealing themselves as a sub-oscillator seance, wherein pitch and frequency modulate according to some unknowable logic. All the while, horns harmonize high in the sky—though their tones are obscured by blasts of galactic detritus—and as a final swell of synthesized starlight beams down from the heavens, the track breaks apart in totality.

The transition between “Life Underground” and “Woven Realm” is essentially seamless, and from the scattered silences of the former emerge the skroning saxophonics of the latter, which soar and scream through echoing corridors, resulting in an extended soliloquy of free jazz fire music. Keys begin letting lose blankets of mysterious arcana in the background, with subdued percolations evoking a lullaby dance through a sea of shadows. Sickly organs swell into a growing body of cacophony that is interspersed by beams of psychotropic radiance, with tonal drones sliding up and down while string instruments mimic theremins. As things progress, another holy soundbath emerges, featuring blissful waves of dissonance, phasing rotations, and the enigmatic dances of bowed strings and blown brass. Cymbal taps grow into stormclouds of metallic haze while elsewhere, Nguyen bashes, smashes, and crashes with reckless abandon, seemingly utilizing every square inch of his kit. And anchored to this kinetic display of rhythmic mesmerism is a glowing cloud of sonic serenity, wherein horns, strings, and synths evoke some mystical ceremony…some ritual of astral ecstasy that builds and builds towards transcendence before flowing away into an outro of seasick keys, woven brass patterns, and twinkling mallet tones.

(images from my personal copy)