Doug Wieselman Releases His Broodingly Hypnotic New Album at the Owl This Thursday

Multi-reedman Doug Wieselman‘s Trio S has been around for almost as long as his legendary, phantasmagorically cinematic circus band Kamikaze Ground Crew (who played a mesmerizing reunion show at Roulette last fall). He started Trio S as a vehicle for his small-scale compositions, which these days involve a lot of hypnotic loopmusic and water melodies. Georg Friedrich Handel, you’re being schooled!

Wieselman, drummer Kenny Wollesen and cellist Jane Scarpantoni are playing the album release for their new one, Somewhere Glimmer – streaming at Bandcamp – at the Owl at around 8 on Nov 9; suggested donation is $10. It’s music to get completely lost in, artful variations on very simple, catchy themes, like a less stylized Angelo Badalamenti.

The bandleader’s distantly Balkan-tinged, moodily resonant clarinet loops mingle over Wollesen’s wind chimes and Scarpantoni’s alternately stern and whispery washes in Sesto, the opening track. Wollesen’s gongs and toms then triangulate a series of angst-fueled crescendos.

Dissociative polyrhythms and echo effects slowly coalesce as New River, a tone poem of sorts, finally begins to ripple along: you could call it organic motorik music. Wieselman switches to banjo, anchoring Scarpantoni’s moody melody in That Way, a gorgeously melancholy, Britfolk-tinged waltz

Piper Hill is uneasily airy, its long-tone exchanges fading in and out over a similarly folk-tinged clarinet loop. A Scarpantoni drone and flickers from Wollesen underpin Wieselman’s moody Balkan melismas in Dreambox, which builds to a ferocious, Macedonian-flavored dance – it’s the album’s high point. Wollesen’s deep-forest brook sonics open the somber Metal in Wood, which morphs into a 19th century-style chain gang theme.

Hallucination of a Storm juxtaposes ominous low-register washes with Wieselman’s blithe bluegrass mandolin. The album winds up with Birdbath, a wryly bittersweet tableau. Call this jazz, or film music, or whatever you want, it’s one of the most darkly unexpected treats of 2017.