by Khagan Aslanov (@virgilcrude)
A quick look at the roster Brandon López put together for nava sagrada should act as a tipped hand before you hear even a single note. The live performance (turned immaculate recording by the deft hands of David Torn) is a congregation of the best in the New York avant-garde scene (and one Boston connection). What they reach for is all creation – an inexorable roil of noise particles. Even removed from the spontaneity of witnessing them live, the sheer power of the group can be felt at every turn, and this beautifully ugly golem they raise from the soil only gets better and more nuanced on repeat listens.
Each of the players assembled is a virtuoso in their field, and naturally, no one plays it straight. There are no walking bass-lines, dulcet harp notes, or beatific electronic draperies. Instead, the group lock into a prolonged bout of high-tension ritualistic friction.
Zeena Parkins’ prepared harp is an expected wonder, a shuddering mesh of crystalline overtones and pulsing distortions. The industrialized sheets of sound she invokes here act as a catalyzing force between the acoustical and electronic instruments at play.
DoYeon Kim’s gagayeum slices through the proceedings at an asymmetrical slant, both an enhancer and circumvention to the rhythm section. The dense vibrato and twanging frequencies she builds act as yet another percussive layer in the fold.
In the continued spirit of subversion, Cecilia Lopez’ electronics carry no ambient or astral aspects. Instead, it’s all jagged geometrics, entering as lurching waves that take the frequencies of the strings and refract them back at odd, dislocated angles, building a call-and-response echo chamber.
Mat Maneri’’s viola is the closest that the group get to an anchoring element. A near-constant tantric microtonal foundation permeates the piece, packed with glissandi and neck-snapping pitch bends, unstable but resolute.
Then there is the dual drum attack of Gerald Cleaver and Tom Rainey. Through bells, cymbals and rim-work, Rainey builds profuse spires of texture, while Cleaver’s snare and rolling tom-toms add layers and layers of viscosity. Together, their kits fuse into a mutating mass of polyrhythmic displacement and relentless impetus.
Through it all, Brandon López is both a grounding aspect and main propulsion of noise. The soundscape he lays down is a big, bold, and brawny tangle. By turns, he leans heavily into sul ponticello techniques to produce nerve-racking glassy screeches, then tilts into percussive slapping. In true Mingus-esque form, he punctuates whatever semi-hollow spaces pop up with ragged sighs and groans, small frustrated prostrations of the architect.
Everything works here and everything feels amplified – the most chaotic parts are blindingly disorienting, and the patient negative spaces feel like the most desolate corners of a collapsing room. What López and his group accomplish is an exalted result of deep listening and a deeper collective possession.
And like most things López does, at the end of all the tumult and entropy lies a tremendous sense of compassion. Tense, agile and inconsolable, nava sagrada overwhelms the senses until you’re dizzy with grace.