Riley Mulherkar: Riley
Westerlies Records

Listeners only familiar with trumpeter Riley Mulherkar from his playing in the New York-based brass quartet The Westerlies may be startled by his debut solo album for at least two reasons. The first has to do with content, which in featuring pieces by Jelly Roll Morton, Hoagy Carmichael, and the Gershwins reveals Mulherkar's deep interest in jazz history, the American songbook, blues, and even ragtime. With bassist Russell Hall and drummer Kyle Poole engaged as Mulherkar's instrumental partners, these tracks further hew to jazz tradition. On the experimental side, however, are the radical programming and sound design treatments co-producers Rafiq Bhatia (Son Lux) and pianist Chris Pattishall have applied to the album material, all with the trumpeter's blessing. It's worth noting too that, in contrast to the largely through-composed material Mulherkar performs with The Westerlies, improvisation is key to Riley, which means we hear him as a soloist more than on the group outings (anyone questioning the trumpeter's skills as an improviser need only turn to the blazing “Hopscotch”). Stitch those elements together, and you've got an adventurous tapestry pretty much unlike anything you've heard before.

The combination of such disparate parts makes for arresting music, no better example the opening “Chicken Coop Blues.” On paper, it features Mulherkar alone, but the foot-tapping accompanying his horn has been amplified and consequently turns the track into an unusual electro-acoustic exercise that in its pulsing lurch even suggests some tangential connection to slow-motion techno (don't let the treatments blind you to the decades of jazz tradition oozing from the soloist's horn, however). Such an opening statement primes us for more surprises. Riley isn't the first time, incidentally, the trumpeter, Bhatia, and Pattishall have worked together, that being in 2017 on an album of Mary Lou Williams material by the pianist. Excited by the production effects the others used on that album incited Mulherkar to ask if they'd collaborate with him on his own.

Sporting a title that naturally calls late trumpeter Jaimie Branch to mind, “Ride or Die” pushes that techno vibe even more to the fore, with this time the trumpet riding an infectiously swinging shuffle groove replete with bass drops, piano splashes, and a tumultuous breakdown. It's safe to say Poole and Hall have never heard themselves presented in quite this way before, nor the leader for that matter. Unfurling like some prototypical ambient soundscaping meditation, “Looking Out” eschews trumpet altogether for two minutes of atmospheric piano smears. Galaxies removed from it, Jelly Roll Morton's “King Porter Stomp” works junkyard percussion and inspired horn playing into a ragtime romp that both hews to tradition and, in its incorporation of found sounds and stomping groove, pushes away from it.

South African vocalist Vuyo Sotashe guests on a deep, dirge-styled reading of the traditional “No More,” the anvil-like pounding punctuating his anguished vocal sounding like nails sealing a coffin. At the outset of this curdling gospel-hymn treatment, Sotashe rises like a spectre before the effects fall away to present his voice in all its grief-stricken glory and Mulherkar's horn like some tortured soul. While he comes at the melody of Carmichael's “Stardust” circuitously, it's eventually articulated directly, the trumpeter smart enough to know when to let such enduring material express itself with artifice kept to a minimum. Even better, the tune's presented as a duet with Pattishall, he also playing it straight and serving up a pretty rendition that honours the original. With the album-closing cover of “Honey Man,” Mulherkar nods in the Gershwins' direction as well as Miles Davis's by way of his Porgy & Bess collaboration with Gil Evans. As with “Stardust,” Mulherkar smartly delivers the melodies directly, even if breath intakes and other manipulations transform the track into an engulfing hurricane as it progresses.

February 2024