For years, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has made music through which little appears to occur, at the very least by aware effort. As a substitute, he merely fills the body with the ephemeral—wind, daylight, church bells, wandering spirits—and nudges it now and again, to maintain the weather in play. His earliest solo work, again when he was nonetheless taking part in in San Francisco post-rockers Tarentel, channeled guitar suggestions into our bodies of liquid, silvery and in fixed flux. Then, for some time, his guiding hand grew to become extra obvious. With 2010’s Love Is a Stream, hints of recognizable kinds started rising from the rose-tinted fog, and by 2015’s A 12 months With 13 Moons, his Mexican Summer season debut, these shapes had sharpened right into a form of dream-pop deja vu: brief, breezy items for guitar and drum machine evoking Fennesz and the Durutti Column. However ultimately, as if he’d come as near precise track craft as he wished, he started easing again into abstraction. By 2019’s elegant Tracing Again the Radiance, he appeared much less like a musician or composer than a panorama artist who, within the method of James Turrell, makes the vicissitudes of the sky itself his main uncooked supplies.
Present Songs is Cantu-Ledesma’s first main launch below his personal title since Tracing Again the Radiance, and it looks like an extension of the 2019 album. There, the artist—credited with simply vibraphone and results—largely disappeared into an ensemble together with Mary Lattimore on harp, Chuck Johnson on pedal metal, and Bing & Ruth’s David Moore on piano. He’s an equally elusive presence right here, unconcerned with solos or spotlights. “For me, it’s attention-grabbing simply to attempt to create the circumstances for individuals to work collectively and get music form of rolling after which pull out issues that I believe are attention-grabbing,” he has stated. “And within the second, attempt to sculpt a bit.”
Understanding of a transformed barn in upstate New York, the place he’s been primarily based for a number of years, he recruited a brand new set of gamers for Present Songs: Omer Shemesh on piano, Booker Stardrum on drums, and Clarice Jensen on cello. Cantu-Ledesma performs guitar, pump organ, Hammond B3, percussion, and modular synthesizer, however the palette this time is nearly completely acoustic; it might be straightforward to imagine that there was no electrical energy concerned past the present required to energy the mics and roll the tape. They went into the studio with little thought of what was to return out, Cantu-Ledesma has stated, which makes the cohesiveness of Present Songs that rather more exceptional. Every of the album’s three main elements—the side-long opener “The Milky Sea,” the three-part “Present Track” suite, and the 10-minute drone piece that blossoms out of the latter—feels absolutely thought-about, each as a standalone and part of the entire. On this manner, Present Songs could be an train in perspective: one thought, or object, considered from three totally different angles.
