ORBITS AND RIFFS
(http://www.ephemeraensemble.com/)
8/10
In an age when so much art is introspective Keyna Wilkins dares to look outwards, and not just to other people or Mother Nature, but to the wider cosmos. There’s nothing like doing that to put our squabbles and Trumpian absurdities into perspective. I presume a personal interest in astronomy has inspired her to write pieces about planets, moons, comets, black holes and more, realised by Wilkins’ own piano and flute, Will Gilbert’s trumpet and Elsen Price’s double bass and loops.
Alongside the compositions this arresting, genre-blurring double album contains group improvisations and the use of eerie “field recordings” of deep-space radio signals. Rather than being all soothing, celestial ambience, however, the upshot is often disquieting music of massive breadth and sometimes high drama. Among the many striking pieces is Craters Of Rhea (Saturn’s heavily pock-marked second-largest moon), performed by Price’s simultaneously sumptuous and unnerving looped bass. Wilkins also has a leavening lighter side that bursts into the foreground as full-blown humour on Red Children, the third part of a Mars suite.