Drummer Kate Gentile’s Formidable Band Headlines At the Silent Barn on October 3

Why are so many of the best jazz albums made by bands led by drummers? Because they have the deepest address books: everybody wants to play with the good ones. Kate Gentile is the latest to keep this hallowed tradition going – her darkly vivid, intensely focused new album Mannequins is streaming at Bandcamp. She has an album release show coming up on a weird but excellently eclectic bill on Oct 3 at 11 PM at the Silent Barn. Art-rocker Martin Bisi – who may do his vortical morass of guitar loops at this one – opens the night at 8, followed by the album release show by assaultive shredmeister Brandon Seabrook‘s Needle Drive and then math-shred duo Bangladeafy. Cover is a measly $8.

As you would expect from a multi-percussionist – she also plays vibraphone here -, her compositions are very diversely rhythmic. The album is a jazz sonata of sorts, variations on a series of cell-like themes, interspersed with miniatures, some of them pretty funny. Matt Mitchell’s distorted synth fuels the staggeringly syncopated opening track, Stars Covered in Clouds of Metal – it comes across as super-syncopated late 70s King Crimson and quickly disintegrates.

Jeremy Viner’s tenor sax and Mitchell’s piano team with the drums for a sardonically blithe theme as Trapezoidal Nirvana pounces along like a Pac Man on acid, Gentile and Adam Hopkins’ bass anchoring a blippy piano solo as the rhythm slowly falls away. The starscape midway through, Gentile going for a noir bongo feel with her rims and hardware as Mitchell sparkles eerily and Viner wafts uneasily, is especially tasty. Again, King Crimson comes to mind, especially as the crescendo builds. 

Unreasonable Optimism pairs unsettlingly syncopted piano, vibes and sax, Gentile entering to provide some welcome ballast and gravitas. Mitchell’s creepy, Mompou-esque belltone piano takes centerstage as bass and drums prowl the perimeter diligently and then drop down to sepulchral wisps along with the sax.

The sardonically titled miniature Hammergaze evokes Kenny Wollesen’s gamelanesque explorations. Otto, on Alien Shoulders revisits the album’s tricky metrics, but more playfully, with squirrelly piano and squiggly electronics. The group follows the aptly and amusingy titled Xenormorphic with Wrack, bustling with animated sax and spiraling piano, the closest thing to mainstream postbop swing here. Then they run the knotty cells of Cardiac Logic.

Rattletrap drums, squalling and then furtive sax make way for deep-sky piano and vibes, then conjoin in the brief diptych Full Lucid. Likewise, the portentous atmospherics of Sear cede the path to the uneasily Messianic piano/sax lattices, steadily cascading variations and wry birdhouse tableau of Micronesia Parakeet.

The album winds up with two massive epics. Alchemy Melt [With Tilt] has a broodingly altered boogie interspersed within jauntily flickering interludes and more of those moodily bubbling cells, punctuated by a long, squiggly Viner solo. Does SSGF neatly synopsize everything? More or less, with stately/exploratory piano dichotomies, a brief bass solo, percolating sax and Gentile’s subtle wit. It ends distinctly unresolved. If you want entertainment and intensity, the album has plenty of both.