Whispering Worlds: Cosmic Cliffs
Adhyâropa Records

Aaron Shragge's not the first trumpeter to be inspired by Jon Hassell, nor will he be the last. The Canadian-born and NYC-based Shragge first heard the late legend's indelible sound at a Santa Monica music store as a seventeen-year-old, and when he later began studying North Indian vocal techniques and thinking about adding a slide to his trumpet, his connection to Hassell deepened. Shragge's public acknowledgement of Hassell's influence occurred in 2022 when the newly formed electro-acoustic unit Whispering Worlds paid tribute to the late artist at the Festival of New Trumpet Music in New York; a year later, an Avaloch Farm Music Institute residency enabled the nascent outfit to continue refining its material, Cosmic Cliffs the logical culmination. It's not the first tribute album with which Shragge's been involved, by the way. His as-striking Innocent When You Dream quintet album from 2017, Dirt In The Ground, is all Tom Waits covers.

Complementing Shragge on customized microtonal trumpet, shakuhachi, and electronics, are Luke Schwartz on guitar and electronics, Damon Banks on bass, and Deric Dickens drums. What might look on paper like a reasonably conventional set-up sounds anything but when two AbletonLive systems are in play to help stretch the music into intergalactic zones ranging from ambient soundscaping to raga-based explorations and trippy space-jazz. Loops, electronic processing, and live sampling are deployed to help expand the music into immersive odysseys. Nine pieces in total are presented, the first four separately credited to Shragge and Hassell, the last five to the quartet, who developed the material during its residency.

Inspired by Hassell's “Moons of Jupiter,” Shragge's “Cosmic Cliffs” inaugurates the trip with his horn evoking his counterpart's signature trumpet sound. With atmospheric washes accumulating into a dense mass, Dickens spreads liberal doses of cymbal accents and flourishes across the expanding field. Schwartz follows suit in adding his own liquidy textures to the ever-mutating whole, the impression collectively established of a massive, combustible life-form. In contrast to the opener's rubato-like design, the subsequent “Pillars” grounds itself in a regulated funk pulse that Shragge wails against. With Banks anchoring the groove, Dickens is able to play freely, and the two provide an inspiring base for Schwartz and Shragge to extemporize against. Here and elsewhere, it's not uncommon for the music to fluidly flow between fixed and free states when the four are all equally engaged in the music's definition.

Integrating three Hassell pieces from his debut album is “Vernal Equinox/Hex/Caracas Night,” its slow-motion drone punctuated by the smoldering to-and-fro of trumpet and guitar. After beginning with some weird-sounding fusion of processed shakuhachi and trumpet, ”Seen By The Moon/Secretly Happy” morphs into a slow, blues-tinged excursion that wouldn't sound out of place on Get Up With it and, in fact, doesn't sound a whole lot unlike Miles's Duke tribute “He Loved Him Madly.” The album's suite-like second half eases into being with the hazy, unhurried drift of “Light Echoes,” collects itself during the brief, percussion-heavy interlude “Reionization,” reanimates with the funky pulsing of “Reflection Nebula” and “Crystals,” and eventually reaches its destination with the sampled tabla-driven improvisation “Serpentine Suspension.”

May 2025