Note: song featured in video above not on album.
Back in 2014, a student at the New England Conservatory of Music randomly caught the ears and eyes of John Zorn. Four years later came the fruit of those chance meetings: Machinic Unconscious Trio is album led by that now-NECM grad Wendy Eisenberg fronting a power trio commissioned by Zorn.
Coming out at the same time as her solo acoustic set of extemporaneous pieces Its Shape Is Your Touch, Machinic (not a typo) finds the highly distinctive guitar of Eisenberg in a shredding mood and for perhaps the first time on a record, put in the same room as some New York heavy hitters: drummer Ches Smith and bassist Trevor Dunn.
Smith and Dunn are no strangers to the task supporting imposing guitarists; Smith is a part of Marc Ribot’s Atomic Dog trio and Mary Halvorson’s main combo while Dunn anchors down the Nels Cline Singers. Both have also worked extensively with Zorn and it’s only too logical that NYC Downtown’s top impresario would put the pair together with this new arrival from the Boston scene.
But Machinic Unconscious Trio is all Eisenberg’s vision, not Zorn’s. “The Descent of Alette” launches not with the shredded shards of guitar, but squiggly circuitry. However, Eisenberg soon appears and throws down sparse and jagged figures that sometimes cross into electronic effects land, à la Nels Cline. As the rhythm section approach cruising altitude, her phrasing becomes agitated and moves further away from restraint. Dunn’s bass is metal-fuzzy there, but on “Depths of Locusts,” he gets into an outright fuzz fight with Eisenberg, a performance marked by micro-moments of silence. Dunn’s overdriven bass once again spars with Eisenberg’s piercing guitar (“Zoning”) as both blur the line between guitar and electronic screeches, prior into briefly settling into a dub groove that’s only a setup for freakout freedom where Eisenberg’s well-honed punk instincts serve her well.
A groove breaks out to herald “Parataxis” and Eisenberg rides it without shedding her barbed attack style one whit; meanwhile, Smith is so locked into her every whim. Another swaying bass-drums figure sets up “Kiln,” and Eisenberg pours out a sustained rain of distorted notes, jamming in much the same manner as Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time band. Dunn’s sinuous bass patterns contrast with Eisenberg’s extraterrestrial whines during “Mycoaelia,” melding improvisation with alien overtones.
“Frayed, Knotted and Unshorn” lives up to the title, a diffused performance with prickly contours and engaging, three-way improv, and “Kin Dza Dza” is a sheer blast of frenzied shredding. Eisenberg introduces a dense figure to launch “Dangerous Red” and the rhythm section aptly builds the right rhythmic pattern around it, calling to mind the Nordic sting of the Scorch Trio, as does “6J.”
Wendy Eisenberg is elbowing her way to the vanguard of guitarists who radically rethink the guitar as Machinic Unconscious Trio — out now from Zorn’s Tzadik label — proves that she can shine in the company of some of the world’s best in improvised music.
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