Hemlocks, Peacocks the new album by the Will Mason Quartet is described as āmicrotonal chamber jazzā recorded in a ālarge resonant chapelā in New England, whose music is inspired by La Monte Youngās solo improvisatory epic The Well-Tuned Piano and modernist works by the painter Joan Mitchell and poet Wallace Stevens. A degree of intimacy with those sources might serve to dispel the notion, but as an introductory brief that could make Hemlocks, Peacocks sound rather academic.
Instead on the album opener āHemlocksā we are greeted with something slinkily and at times queasily seductive as Masonās shakers and silt percussion becomes a riverbed, over which Anna Webber, Danny Fisher-Lochhead and deVon Russell Gray play a series of drones and short phrases from the grandfather clock melodies of Grayās keys ā with Hemlocks, Peacocks featuring two keyboards retuned to echo Youngās system of just intonation, while the instruments themselves are modelled to take after the distinctive sound of the Fender Rhodes ā to winnowing reeds or held drones and overtones, which might stem from the keys or equally from Webberās tenor and Fisher-Lochheadās alto saxophones.
The details differ on āThe Fallen Leaves, Repeating Themselvesā but the mood lingers and the sense of swing remains the same, as Masonās smooth skittering drums underlie a series of repetitions and embellishments before āTwilightā proves more ponderous, slowing everything down in keeping with the time of day. The shifting rhythms of āTurned in the Fireā provide a showcase for Webber, with the saxophones steadily building off one another, while on āHymnā a duet between Mason and Gray and again on the more celestial āPlanetsā those justly intoned keys, which have previously added a kind of offbeat rotundity to the compositions, now glimmer with a mottled and matte twinkle which is sometimes redolent of dinged gongs. Finally on āPeacocksā the quartet evoke something of Albert Ayler or latter-day Pharoah Sanders as the rhythms become more martial and their jazz takes on more spiritual airs.