BANDCAMP DAILY: Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: October 2020
BANDCAMP DAILY: Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: October 2020
BY PETER MARGASAK
“Travis Laplante is a seasoned, thoughtful improviser who’s developed a rigorous compositional practice through his superb tenor saxophone quartet Battle Trance, which articulates his meticulously plotted long-form pieces from memory. On this mesmerizing new collaboration with the New York piano-percussion quartet Yarn/Wire he melds those two worlds seamlessly, draping spontaneous, deeply spiritual lines over undulating background atmospheres to create a kind of hushed beauty. Here, Laplante generally eschews the bruising extroversion common in his earlier work in favor of a more controlled attack, creating lines of unerring beauty and tenderness without a hint of sentimentality.
On each of the album’s three extended pieces the members of Yarn/Wire weave gorgeous tapestries of sustained sound, constructing variegated waves of piano and vibraphone arpeggios, astringent bowed metal, resonant chimes, and thudding frame drums that accrue density and volume as each part evolves, matching the saxophonist’s gradual intensification. While Laplante is the clear focal point, the most impressive achievement of the project is how locked-in all five musicians are, ditching detailed scores and concepts in favor of a collective enterprise that organically traces a series of emotional arcs that draw upon the sophisticated language and techniques mastered by the participants without ever drawing attention to them. The open structure means this excellent recording represents just one iteration of a perpetually changing work.”