By Brian Earley
The most adventurous music offers an exchange with its listeners. Dedicate time and attention to its often unpredictable operations, and receive a return. For me, when I listen to The Giant is Awkward, the latest release from Victor Vieira-Branco’s trio Bark Culture, the return is as immediate as it is sustained. A feeling of something like exhilaration in the moment, of following master improvisers on their way to a circuitous but directing truth.
Victor Vieira-Branco is a vibraphonist and composer who grew up in Brazil, but spends most of his time these days in Philadelphia, that is when he is not touring with Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra or Chad Taylor’s Quintet, which played Big Ears this March. With The Giant, his trio Bark Culture has its second release, the maiden voyage being the acclaimed Warm Wisdom from 2024, and is rounded out by bassist John Moran and drummer Joey Sullivan.
Together, the trio makes music that is angular, surprising, and almost always just off center. The opening track, “Palace,” is a representative example of this. After a slanted theme marked by what sounds like finger pounding by vibes and piano, the music descends into a deep madness with Sullivan and Moran following no particular time or engaging in any semblance of functional harmony. But after several minutes of gleefully wild chaos, the band unifies again, rights itself, and collectively enters a second set of thematic material before leaping into yet one more wall of noise.
I should pause to state that this release is made particularly special by the presence of guest pianist Sam Yulsman. Yulsman is one of the engines behind the supreme madness one finds on this album, as he smashes and mashes and slams his piano keys in the sections I find to be most adventurous, most dissonant and wild. He even contributed a composition, the second song “Farce,” which, with its asymmetrical thematic unison of vibes and piano leading into surrounded moments of unhinged sonic rantings, is right at home on The Giant is Awkward.
Vieira-Branco is composer of all of the other works here. While his compositions are lovely, the interplay of the musicians is what makes this album move from coherent to something really special. Drummer Joey Sullivan seems to me to have a particularly strong musical relationship with Vieira-Branco, and the two are as likely to play their respective percussion instruments with mathematical precision as they are to respond spontaneously to sudden snare rolls, cymbal crashes, or introverted vibraphone bowing.
And all of this is not to suggest Victor V-B’s compositions are not at times stunningly beautiful. Listen, for example, to the penultimate work on the record, “Panic.” The piece is quiet, introspective, full of tenderness and empathy and, in communicating as much, is not at all what I expect when I think of the word panic. The song seems almost guru-like in this way as it flows in and out of time and traditional harmonies to moments of collective improvisation. Panic is a navigable state here, as marked by beauty as it is by its unexpected torsions, but always as composed and improvised as the day itself.
The Giant is Awkward is one of the standout releases of this year for me. Its depth of feeling and spontaneously combustible surprises find themselves one minute collectedly astute, and beard grabbing lunatic raving the next. For all of this work’s intelligence and its musicians technical virtuosity, there is never a moment where I feel the energy is not in service of art or the music itself. And this is the adventure Bark Culture has offered to its potential listeners with this album: follow them with attention and effort, and deep pleasure manifests along the path with wisps of transformation sailing in its sonic wilderness.
The Giant is Awkward can be found here.