Stereogum —
What does faith sound like? How about respect, or trust? There Is A Garden, the new semi-improvised album from Brooklyn-based experimental supergroup Beings, answers these questions with scarcely a word spoken across its nine songs. Listen to the beginning of “Happy To Be,” one of two songs from the album released today, and hear percussionist Jim White find his footing in real time alongside saxophonist Zoh Amba: the crackling croon of her horn finds a gentle melody against which White builds his thundering drums. Then, Steve Gunn enters the scene, his reverating guitar adding texture as much as rhythm, freeing Amba to further explore the range of her instrument, introducing motifs that will appear, almost as if by magic, later in the song. Bassist, keyboardist, and producer Shahzad Ismaily, the musical polymath who has performed with everyone from Marc Ribot to Yoko Ono, is ineffably present in the delicate, almost imperceptible glimmer of a synth that undergirds the song and unites its disparate elements.
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