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"...an intense delight that I haven’t heard tonally since Clifford Jordan or Mingus." — Harmony Holiday
The Depths of Memory by Kevin Sun – out October 27, 2023
1st half From All This Stillness out July 7, 2023 – available on Bandcamp
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Kevin Sun - tenor saxophone
Adam O’Farrill (tracks 2, 3) - trumpet Dana Saul - piano Walter Stinson (track 3) - bass Simón Willson (tracks 1, 2) - bass Matt Honor (tracks 1, 3) - drums Dayeon Seok (track 2) - drums DISC 1 1 From All This Stillness 20:54 2 Eponymous Cycle 24:28 DISC 2 3 The Depths in Slow Motion 37:04 Endectomorph Music Catalog No.
EMM-015 “From All This Stillness” recorded by Nolan Thies at The Bunker Studio, Brooklyn, NY on May 26, 2022 · “Eponymous Cycle” recorded by Aaron Nevezie at The Bunker Studio, Brooklyn, NY on May 12, 2021 · “The Depths in Slow Motion” recorded by David Stoller at The Samurai Hotel, Astoria, NY on December 15, 2021 · Mixed by Juanma Trujillo · Mastered by Brent Lambert at The Kitchen Mastering · Produced by Kevin Sun, Jacob Shulman, Seymour Euge, and Walter Stinson · Photography by Kevin Sun · Design by Diane Zhou · Liner notes by Harmony Holiday · Total length: 1:22:25 All compositions by Kevin Sun (The Kevin Sun Music / ASCAP) In loving memory of my grandfather, 孫國敏 |
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Liner notes
I begin with “From Some Unseen Center”—epiphanic wandering that loops a jubilant alarm call for piano and roaming drums that are looking for the chance to turn suspense into dance. I enter through the bullseye of the album and listen outward in both directions at once, the way justice might enter music, out-of-sequence but on time. When tones and improvisational styles, even the use of interval and space, sound singular and new to me, as this album does, I am shocked, and even suspicious and nervous that it might undermine itself, because so much has become ornate and derivative replica of what might have been, nostalgia-poison-jazz—too classical, too true to its fashion, or too much of a contrived fusion. The rhetoric of renovation constantly surrounding the music doesn’t help.
On this album we receive a future unobstructed by any goofy or heavy handed attempts to align with futurism™ or the glories of the past. The tones go on skipping and stammering with the bright optimism of a child, a cheerfulness that is hesitant to occupy itself and sometimes abandons itself for the pensive or macabre. The cognition between the notes and compositions is vivid and tangible, a nonlinear narrative about moving through territory you were told was dangerous but are compelled to witness and overcome for yourself.
The piano flashes jagged deterritorializing grins or howls and refuses to pose in any one mood or be halted by the tension it sets up between intimacy and dazzle. One moment the music confides in you and you feel as sacred as an oracle, and the next it passes you twirling and lush, filled with the energy of first love or new love, centered on idyllic domestic mysticism. These are the textures of transmuting isolation by going deeper into it, the textures of entrance with no exit but play and adventure that forces you to submit to it or be ruined.
Sun has found the balance between the intellect, or improvisational music that teaches you how to think in new patterns, and the spirit, alighted by music that revokes your access to overthinking and forces you into a trance of the present moment. The frenzy that ensues is lighthearted and interrupted by soothe and swarm. Where I expect drama to be the driving energy of the compositions, I hear only delight, but an intense delight that I haven’t heard tonally since Clifford Jordan or Mingus. What I hear is triumph so obvious it probably frightens the composer into wondering if it’s a mirage. It is not.
This album is a secret world that any wise listener begins to feel beholden to by the final initiation as song. Great jazz music has always seduced its listeners by collapsing the distance between thought and feeling until a mood that can never be imitated outside of the universe of its players and their dynamic is formed. These worlds become ghost towns, the haunts that avid listeners tell had-to-be-there stories about to keep the circle unbroken. It is a privilege to be haunted by this exact music in this era that needs new ghosts.
--Harmony Holiday, March 2023
On this album we receive a future unobstructed by any goofy or heavy handed attempts to align with futurism™ or the glories of the past. The tones go on skipping and stammering with the bright optimism of a child, a cheerfulness that is hesitant to occupy itself and sometimes abandons itself for the pensive or macabre. The cognition between the notes and compositions is vivid and tangible, a nonlinear narrative about moving through territory you were told was dangerous but are compelled to witness and overcome for yourself.
The piano flashes jagged deterritorializing grins or howls and refuses to pose in any one mood or be halted by the tension it sets up between intimacy and dazzle. One moment the music confides in you and you feel as sacred as an oracle, and the next it passes you twirling and lush, filled with the energy of first love or new love, centered on idyllic domestic mysticism. These are the textures of transmuting isolation by going deeper into it, the textures of entrance with no exit but play and adventure that forces you to submit to it or be ruined.
Sun has found the balance between the intellect, or improvisational music that teaches you how to think in new patterns, and the spirit, alighted by music that revokes your access to overthinking and forces you into a trance of the present moment. The frenzy that ensues is lighthearted and interrupted by soothe and swarm. Where I expect drama to be the driving energy of the compositions, I hear only delight, but an intense delight that I haven’t heard tonally since Clifford Jordan or Mingus. What I hear is triumph so obvious it probably frightens the composer into wondering if it’s a mirage. It is not.
This album is a secret world that any wise listener begins to feel beholden to by the final initiation as song. Great jazz music has always seduced its listeners by collapsing the distance between thought and feeling until a mood that can never be imitated outside of the universe of its players and their dynamic is formed. These worlds become ghost towns, the haunts that avid listeners tell had-to-be-there stories about to keep the circle unbroken. It is a privilege to be haunted by this exact music in this era that needs new ghosts.
--Harmony Holiday, March 2023
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