My review of Ben Monder's ECM leader debut, Amorphae, today at All About Jazz.
Having made his first—and, up to now, only—appearance on Munich's lauded ECM Records on the late drummer Paul Motian's Garden of Eden (2006), it's certainly taken a long time for the virtuosically talented guitarist to get a date of his own. Monder's résumé—while filled with significant associations including, in addition to Motian, composer/bandleader Maria Schneider, double bassist and occasional ECM label mate Marc Johnson, saxophonist Donny McCaslin (with whom Monder will also be appearing on the upcoming * (Black Star) by David Bowie) and drummer/composer John Hollenbeck—has always been a little shy on recordings under his own name, but for his ECM leader debut he takes a complete left turn from more rigorously composed, band-centric albums like Oceana (Sunnyside, 2005) and Hydra (Sunnyside, 2013). Instead, with Amorphae, he delivers an album of almost entirely improvised music, and of a far more atmospheric nature than those that came before.
The two solo guitar improvs that bookend Amorphae—the aptly titled "Tendrils," with its reverb-drenched linear phrases expanding well, like tendrils, out of oblique, volume-swelled chords; and the more celestial "Dinosaur Skies," where volume pedal and digital delay create a real-time layering of notes, phrases and chords that allow harmonic overtones to build into dense clouds of soft, cushiony sound that gradually turn darker and more angular—are something of a shift from the technique-driven (but never for the sake of it) approach that has garnered Monder such a strong reputation, especially amongst guitarists. Neither track—nor any of Amorphae eight pieces, for that matter—approach the kind of relentless fingerpicking that defined, for example, a stunning but exhausting half-hour solo performance on the second evening of Ottawa, Canada's GuitarNow! workshop weekend in 2013.
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