A Closer Listen
Fans of Markus Floats‘ Third Album will receive the fourth record as an expansion of timbre and theme; newcomers may go back to seek out his Constellation debut. That percolating record was filled with layer upon MIDI layer, as effervescent as sparkling water. On Fourth Album, the artist invites musicians from Egyptian Cotton Arkestra (in which he plays bass) to improvise over an electronic base: Ari Swan on violin, James Nicholas Dumile Goddard on saxophone and mbira and Lucas Huang on drums and guitar. The collaborative effort is an organic-electronic blend, a shared vision that is more than the sum of its parts.
Not that any of this is apparent from the beginning. “Introduction” is a perky piece, primarily electronic, brief and beguiling; when the friends arrive, they do so sweetly, in a mid-piece serenade. The track is accessible, appealing and over far too soon. After this, Floats introduces some heftier themes, with the two-part “Death,” the diptych “AS ABOVE/SO BELOW,” “mdhvn” and “Heaven Is Each Other,” which seems an excavation of the album’s theme. Humans are not meant to be alone. Even “Introduction” finds a partner in “Second Introduction.” But don’t expect these tracks to be matching pairs; they are more complimentary in nature, as the album grows more abstract as it unfolds, a reverse Genesis, order to (not quite) chaos.
“Death,” for example, may be the cheeriest track to ever bear that name. How can this track be titled “Death”? one asks. The entire album offers shifting perspectives, alternate viewpoints, the benefit of multiple voices. By “AS ABOVE,” the Orchestra is in full effect, lending the piece a tribal flavor, a connection to ancient religions. But “Interlude” is the clear dividing line, cooling the tone for “Death (Pt. 2), more elegiac than its predecessor, suffused with reflective and mournful piece. At 4:18 a goblin appears, a disconcerting touch.
Having ascended to the heights and descended to the depths, Floats returns to earth. “Heaven Is Each Other” implies a faith more horizontal than vertical. In “C,” his first studio work to involve spoken word, he samples the words of poet Fred Moten: “I wanna run through the whole range of possible permutations of the phrase, “Figure it out.” Experimenting with syllable and inflection, Moten exposes multiple facets of language, landing as Floats does on the concept of collaboration. How will we create? How will we move forward? How will we overcome? The musician and the poet converge on the word “together.” (Richard Allen)
Tue Oct 17 00:01:01 GMT 2023