If today is a day to celebrate good things happening in the USA, you better also be listening to the epic collaboration between Jlin and Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion. That puts the Gary, Indiana-born Jerrilynn Patton (Jlin) right up alongside Philip Glass and David Longstreth, where frankly, she totally belongs. And it’s touring.
Jlin’s sonic and compositional imagination is a singular force. And you can just feel the player’s infectious enthusiasm. Composer-player relations rarely reach this kind of bliss. On “Vernacular,” you just feel pure joy — the sense that each rhythm is tickling brains and making the instruments evolve into new lifeforms right before your eyes.
Just watch them tear through the titular opus:
It’s a beautiful ensemble effort, on the production and recording, and excellent compositions from David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors) and Philip Glass (known from his project, Philip Glass). Listen to the band talk about the project:
But each of Jlin’s compositions pushes some wonderful new direction. “LC3″‘s complex cross-talk of percussion lines in a forward-propelled, jaggedly surprising chopped-up bits of pattern and sudden bursts of sliced samples is dazzling. “Carbon 12” is gorgeously hypnotic. I love percussion ensemble works; I’ve written some, even. This is just exceptional work, like a collapsed star’s worth of influences from the ensemble itself, from Jlin’s electronic productions, from jazz, all in something effortless and organic. Even with all the time you may have spent listening to these ensembles or Third Coast’s own rich repertoire, this will make you discover some new territory.
Longstreth’s “Butterfly Dancing Over a Barrel” is beautifully delicate and poetic, a contrasting pairing that nonetheless feels like it fits perfectly with Jlin. There are almost some echoes of George Crumb in there somewhere, and a feeling of real expressive freedom.
It’s a magical album, start to finish:
And maybe this is just what we need — raw musicianship and acoustic instruments, not only the virtual void. I mean, it’s always great to have percussion ensembles, now or anytime.
But then I also love that after listening to this, I hear Jlin’s own footwork differently, like the colors have even gotten richer. This will make you want to go back and practice your Push, too, I think. So perhaps that electronic-acoustic divide doesn’t matter at all, and it’s all about human imagination, made physical. Enjoy!
And Europe and the USA each have a chance to see this live, so don’t pass that up!