A gorgeous new release from Ewart Asplund Ricks Trio brings together a series of textures and natural instrumentation that build on atmospheric and lush waves of sound that come through with a certain kind of soul that draws you right in.
The Emphatic Now release is comprised of eight songs some ranging up to almost 18 minutes in length and each one bears its own approach and overall feel.
These are emotional feelings songs, and they have a way of crawling under your skin in the best ways possible.
Songs like this really make you think and dig into the different tonalities that are involved and I think that that's important when it comes to this sort of improvisational songwriting approach.
You definitely have cinematic value here and these kinds of haunting jazz undertones at times all bring together a certain spirit with them and as soon as the song begins, you're able to kind of get attached to those aspects.
These songs come through beautifully layered and always focus on a particular instrument at hand that the rest of the track revolves around, and this gives off a very unique energy with each different track.
These songs are very expansive and wide ranged with a vast end mysterious feel to them at times but they each post this natural and earthy vibe.
There's certainly no walls put up in terms of the experimentation on this record and it feels like everyone involved had a really good time doing it because there's a certain freedom to this improvisational approach that you can kind of feel in the music itself.
It's fun to know that no one knows exactly where it's going to go or what's going to happen next but something certainly is and it's going to adapt itself to the flow of the song.
And these songs do have very particular forward-moving flows to them but it's really something to float along with the notes that are unfolding.
One of the things that hit me hard about this record is this beautiful sort of range of instrumentation because you have some great percussion along with vocals that come in and out here and there, you have viola, certain electronic instruments even didgeridoo performed on this record along with piano and so much more.
There's no one particular thing that this record is and I find that endlessly alluring because this is an incredibly creative collaboration of musicians who are doing this for the passion of doing it and that also comes through in the music quite often.
The songs can get eerie, calming, intense, and spacious and it's all done with this really freeing tonality.
At times it's almost as if the instruments are speaking words to You and I love that.
This is certainly the kind of thing that I'd like to see live so that I can just get engulfed and everything and have these notes float around in the air that's around me.
A gorgeous record from a group of musicians that do their own thing in their own way.
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