Shards is the sound of three musicians who have found a common language and speak it fluently.
Red Hook Records
Jason Moran – piano; BlankFor.ms – electronics, tape loops, processing; Marcus Gilmore – drums
When Rahsaan Roland Kirk started feeding tape loops into his live performances in the 1960s, jazz audiences didn’t quite know what to do with it — familiar instruments suddenly trailing ghost sounds, the music doubling back on itself. The shock has long worn off. On Shards, Jason Moran, BlankFor.ms, and drummer Marcus Gilmore treat electronics and tape loops as naturally as a pianist treats the sustain pedal — just another way to let a note linger, bend, or come back changed. Their second album on Red Hook Records builds on 2023’s Refract, but with more air in it. Longer pieces, wider spaces, the music moving like a meandering river rather than a series of rapids.
The music sits comfortably between composed and improvised. ‘Shard I’ covers a lot of ground in eight minutes — piano rumbling low while tape loops add their own bass thump, then Moran spins out long pretty lines with the electronics swirling softly around him, cymbals shimmering, everything dissolving quietly at the end. ‘Tape Loop A Echo’ strips that gentleness away, BlankFor.ms pushing the electronics into fattening, insistent loops while Gilmore drives harder on the drums, the whole thing threatening to boil over.
‘Shard II’ pulls back from the turbulence, the plodding low-end giving way to brighter textures above. ‘Shard III’ opens as pure percussion — Moran hitting keys so rapidly they lose their pitch and just tap, Gilmore’s drums answering in kind, the electronics adding a low restless rumble beneath it all. Then a chord, held. A few single notes. New notes landing on the resonance of the last ones, the electronics easing in quietly, and gradually the piano opens into a melody worth staying for.
‘Barbershop’ is where the album catches fire — low piano notes struck hard, phrases building in intensity feeling like they’re never going to stop, tape loops sounding like someone running sandpaper over a microphone head, and drums locking into a controlled chaotic shuffle that wouldn’t be out of place at a late night rave. The ending sounds like something mechanical was turned off and it’s winding down — you can feel the heat and almost smell the smoke.
‘Shard IV’ could be the introduction to a classical piece — pretty piano phrases, cymbals and electronic processing shimmering together. Those piano phrases shift, the left hand throwing out flurries of low notes while the right slams out short phrases one after another, drums getting aggressive — then, just as suddenly, it slows, quiets, and ebbs away.
Shards is the sound of three musicians who have found a common language and speak it fluently.
