This one is real nice. Listen to this one to feel the nice feelings.
Play Time is the Hudson Valley-based trio of percussionist Booker Stardrum (SML, Photay, Lisel, Wendy Eisenberg, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma), saxophonist Will Epstein (Nicolás Jaar, Photay, DARKSIDE, Dave Harrington), and synth player Ben Vida (Marina Rosenfeld, YarnWire, Lea Bertucci, Tyondai Braxton). They're going to release their debut album Magic Object this summer on Balmat, the experimental electronic label run by Lapsus Festival director Albert Salinas and esteemed music journalist Philip Sherburne.
Our first preview of Magic Object is opening track "Open The Door, Joey," and, yes, the niceness. Let it flow. The combination of the ambling Moog/drums groove and the droning sax here is hypnotic. It sounds like the essence of beauty finding some form between the spiritual and physical — breathing, flickering floating, moving along at its own leisurely pace. Yet despite inhabiting that liminal organic/electronic state, it never ceases to sound like the work of three musicians in a mind meld, playing together as a unit. "You’re hearing us discover the voice of the band in real time," Vida says. "We finished those sessions and we were like, 'Oh, that’s what our band sounds like now.'"
In his Futurism Restated newsletter today, Sherburne summed up Magic Object like so:
After finding their footing together during a residency at Kingston, NY’s Tubby’s, they set up for a couple days in a converted barn upstate and hit record while they jammed for seven or eight hours a stretch on Moog, percussion, and saxophone; Magic Object represents the highlights of those improvised sessions. I’m reminded in places of Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, or some of Oren Ambarchi’s work; it’s hypnotic and evolving and completely immersive.
Listen below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Open The Door, Joey"
02 "Q&A"
03 "Wanderers"
04 "Magic Object"
05 "Public Broadcast"
06 "Waves Within Waves"
07 "22° Halo"
08 "Standing On One Foot"
09 "Float All Bones"
Magic Object is out 7/3 on Balmat. Pre-order it here.
