Following the steady exhalations and springtime exultations ofĀ Regrowth – a record brought to life by a burgeoning group of young musicians and collaborators including Immanuel Wilkins on the alto saxophone, Lee Meadvin on guitar, Paul Cornish on keys, Nick Dunston on bass and Connor Parks on drums – now on We Fell in Turn the trombonist and composer Kalia Vandever embarks with plum surety upon her debut solo album.
Recorded over the course of three days in upstate New York and rooted in an habitual process of improvisation through a spare sound palette of ‘solo trombone, voice, effects and little more’, on We Fell in Turn she murmurs in mirrored solitude and offers recollections from the shore, connecting the dots between early Grouper and the billowing guitar loops of Forfolks by Jeff Parker as the artist draws inspiration from childhood memories, her Hawaiian heritage and the intangible feeling of life as it stirs from a vivid dream.
The component parts might be solitary and stark but there is still a velvetiness to Vandever’s tone and a billowing quality to her music despite its mournfulness and melancholy. The stately yet luminous ‘Temper the Wound’ for instance finds a sonorous bridge between cosmic jazz in the devotional vein of Turiya SingsĀ by Alice Coltrane and ‘The Anchor Song’ by Bjƶrk, shafts of light stretching homeward to dispel the tenebrous gloom.
