Edition: EDN1245
Mark Guiliana (drums, cymbals, percussion, piano, vibraphone, marimba, celeste, pump organ, mellotron, jupiter 8, electronics, drum programming, spoken word)
Recorded by Oliver Roman at Studio 606 (Los Angeles, CA), Pete Min at Lucy’s Meat Market (Los Angeles, CA), John Davis at The Bunker Studio (Brooklyn, NY) & Mark Guiliana at HEERNT Headquarters (Los Angeles, CA)
Capitalising your first name as the title of an album is a strong declaration of personal identity. For many, Guiliana has no need to introduce himself as his impressive back catalogue of recordings ranges from Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ album to recordings with Phronesis, Donny McCaslin, Brad Mehldau, Avishai Cohen, to pick a small sample, to say nothing of being an in-demand touring musician with these and other artists. But one gets the sense that this is an album in which he has set himself the goal of focussing on himself and evaluating his life.
The set opens with ‘Just Listen’ on which highly detailed, complex drum patterns play over what sounds like an answerphone message with phrases like ‘hello come you hear me?… yeah, I’ve been distracted…yeah, I’m still here… so where is it that you’re trying to get to?” and the beeps of various segments of the message stopping. The phone calls seem to be about arranging a rendezvous but we only have one side of the conversation. But this is neat way of introducing the album’s concerns with themes of identity and growth such as who am I, where am I going, and what do I stand for? This is followed by ‘Kamakura’ with a mellotron tune that has the elegance and simplicity of, say, Cluster. This, like the other tracks in which he moves between rhythmic and harmonic instruments, maintains his metronomic timing that creates an austere beauty in each piece. This is not the say that the rhythms are in any simple, and the layers of beats calls to mind a host of musical styles Most of the pieces are relatively short and this brevity further emphasises their precision, rather like ice-sculptures.
On the closing three tracks, there is a sense of resolution and hope. ‘Alone’, track 8, has the strongest sense of melodic progression, built on top of a single pulsing note, and could easily accompany images of a spaceship either floating away from earth or flying home – and this is somewhat paradoxical image, for me, sums up the feeling of the album. This is followed by the taught, disturbing ‘Introspection station, in which scurrying piano lines run across electronic noises and a pounding drum pattern, before segueing into the tranquillity of the closing ‘Peace, please’. If this is a search for identity, I like to think that not only has he found himself but also the many selves that contribute to his playing, and that the album celebrates each of these.
