Keyboardist and composer Phillip Golub’s continued experiments into microtonality has yielded a startling set of works. Partisan Ship, out May 15 2026, is a group of adventurous, electric jazz originals where Golub plays a microtonal midi keyboard called a Flexichord. This is a fuller realization of his prior release Loop 7 (2025), which used a couple of 22-note per octave acoustic pianos played through a keyboard controller to play a chamber piece.
Playing small interval notes on instruments not normally set up to play them isn’t a novel experiment; we’ve used this space to cover the microtonal probes of guitarist David Fiuczynski in more than one instance. Even when discussing a microtonal keyboard, that’s been done before, too.
What Golub brings to the table is a strong jazz sensibility that enables the main artistry to come from his compositions, his arrangements of them and the talent he had arrayed to carry them out. That Flexichord isn’t a gimmick in Golub’s hands, it’s a tool that opens the door wide open for more harmonic possibilities for the groundwork he already laid.
“Loyalty Oath” part traveling carnival gone slightly askew, part fusion jazz and part klezmer jazz. It’s an inspired mash of styles but it wouldn’t quite work with Western tone intervals. Synths and drum machines add an electronic element but that’s counterbalanced by Yuma Uesaka (reeds) and Amir ElSaffar (trumpet) on the organic end.
“Partisan Ship” brings back Uesaka and ElSaffar but also adds Anna Webber’s flute and they all trade microtonal fours with Golub, bringing the feel of traditional jazz to an otherworldly song. Going ever deeper into the vintage/future jazz dichotomy, “Mutiny”‘s mixture of swing and interstellar space tones makes this a song Sun Ra could have well concocted.
The adrift interlude “Interlude (Adrift)” segues into 4th-world type rhythms but also distinctive from Jon Hassell’s vision from the microtones and an organic blend of Layale Chaker’s 5-String violin and David Leon’s alto saxophone. The primal rhythms sometimes takes a breather, suspending the song in a floating state.
“Cries of the Initiated” incorporates more than the usual share of reeds with Uesaka supplying most of them along with Webber on tenor saxophone, and it’s an aural wonder to hear them perform an intertwining arrangement in congruence with Golub’s Flexichord.
By exploiting the notes that fall outside the 12-tone equal temperament system, Golub found a new outlet for his broad reach within the realms of progressive jazz, world music and creative music. Partisan Ship is wildly ambitious, but these ambitions are realized.
Pre-order/order Partisan Ship from Bandcamp.
- Phillip Golub – ‘Partisan Ship’ (2026) - May 14, 2026
- Chris Potter – ‘Alive With Ghosts Today’ (2026) - May 6, 2026
- Patricia Brennan & Sylvie Courvoisier, “Disparate Chase” from ‘Talamanti’ (2026): sneak peek - May 4, 2026
