KYLE BRUCKMANN / TOM DJLL / JACOB FELIX HEULE / KANOKO NISHI-SMITH
Brittle Feebling
(Humbler) CD $12.00
Brittle Feebling prickles and bleats, an abrasive delicacy. Fricative rasp and withheld breath seethe together in a discomfiting cuddle. Perfectly respectable instruments (oboe, English horn, trumpet, floor tom, and koto) born of classicisms both European and Nihongo are recast and glanced at askance, as the misbegotten miscreants of imperialisms they (also) are.
GABBY FLUKE-MOGUL / JACOB FELIX HEULE / KANOKO NISHI-SMITH
Non Dweller
(Humbler) CD $12.00
(Humbler) Used CD $8.00
Violinist Nishi-Smith and Heule on bass drum, together as a duo since 2007, recorded two long-form free improvisations with violinist Fluke-Mogul in 2019, traversing the uncharted depths, hand in hand, inch by inch. “Thorny, gnarly, and excellently paced,” says Brian Olewnick, while Alex Tripp of Endaural observes that the trio’s “creaks and groans fill the walls,” as if placing the listener “in an old building that struggles under its own weight. But the music also allows the walls to come down, to make the activity plainly visible.”
Light From Another Light
(Humbler) CD $12.00
The instrumentation on Light From Another Light differs from the Song Cycle album (Humbler 2015) with Danishta Rivero of Las Sucias making extensive use of modular electronics, and Jacob Felix Heule (Sult, Bill Orcutt) expanding to a full drum kit. The improvised pieces here, representative of Voicehandler’s live sets from the past couple years, are loose and exploratory, at various times energetic and meditative. Rivero’s voice embraces noise and blurs the lines blurred between electronic processing and extended vocal techniques. Heule’s drumming maintains its typical ear for timbre within the context of driving percussive intensity.