Curt Sydnor: Deep End Shallow
Out Of Your Head Records

Keyboardist Curt Sydnor found the perfect partners to help bring his fever dream Deep End Shallow to life: saxophonist Caroline Davis, guitarist Aaron Dugan, bassist Michael Coltun, and drummer Greg Saunier. With Davis and Deerhoof's Saunier associated with her Alula project, it's only natural that the bold mindset of that trio should make its way into Sydnor's. And much like last year's self-titled Alula release, Deep End Shallow delves into diverse stylistic zones, its space jazz at once some wonky melange of Frank Zappa, Sun Ra, and Naked City. The album draws from childhood memories associated with Lynchburg, Virginia, where Sydnor grew up, the title itself alluding to an incident that occurred there during his childhood: the draining of its Riverside Park Pool in the early ‘60s, a move made by local authorities to counter efforts by civil rights leaders to integrate the city's whites-only swimming pools.

Seven of the eight tracks were recorded at Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn in 2016, a telling detail for the intensity and vitality common to both the locale and the performances (having relocated in early 2019, Sydnor now calls Richmond, Virginia home). Just as countless ethnicities call the NY borough home, multiple genres sneak into Deep End Shallow, from experimental rock and instrumental hip-hop to even classical. The leader embellishes the arrangements with layers of organ, piano (acoustic and electric), and synthesizers, while Davis and Dugan bring incisive, front-line counterpoint to the band's furor.

Emblematic of the style and sensibility in play is “Starewell,” a raucous scene-setter animated by the leader's electric piano and synths, Saunier's rambunction, squalling guitar work by Dugan and extra axesmith Ofir Ganon, and sax wail by Davis. Here and elsewhere, the focus is more on ensemble playing than individual soloing, with the players intent on powering through the tunes like some hellacious, single-minded beast. It's the kind of unpredictable release where one might as easily encounter slide guitar playing and woozy turntable-like effects (“it is what it was”) as wild stabs at prog and fusion (“Rus In Urbe”). The album's biggest surprise, however, arrives six tracks in when “Fieldgaze Variations”—the inclusion of Jad Atoui's modular synth treatments notwithstanding—presents Sydnor on acoustic piano for an extended classical-inflected rumination. Given its predilection for rapidly shifting gears, it's perhaps no accident that the thudding head trip “Them!” shares its title with the 1954 sci-fi film about monstrous irradiated ants wreaking havoc on the earth. There's little chance anyone will be caught nodding off as it plays, and much the same could be said for the recording as a whole.

May 2020