Ensemble: Live!

Under the Arp moniker, producer/songwriter Alexis Georgopoulos has dabbled in minimal electronics, cinematically spacy synth meditations, and even Eno-worshipping art pop. His 2018 album Zebra explored new stylistic territory, the entirely instrumental set of songs dipping its toes in cosmic jazz, playful electronic pop, and interplay between spare synth funk and processed woodwinds. After acting as composer/conductor for Zebra, Georgopoulos assembled a band which included some of his album collaborators for several live dates, and after those went well, took the band into the studio to capture the shifting sound of the material. In that sense, Ensemble Live is not the concert document the title might suggest. Rather than recording live performances, the five-person band that makes up the personnel on the album entered a studio to get a live-in-the-room sound. In addition to reworkings of Zebra highlights like the lilting Nzuku, the band also plays four new compositions. These new songs include the tense conversation between percussion and processed electronics on Voices and the free-floating Eos. On both Eos and a markedly reworked version of Zebras Reading a Wave, David Lackners processed saxophones take center stage. Layers of natural reverb and artificial electronic delay take turns repeating his clusters of notes, pushing the spare tunes into places of mystery, confusion, and bliss. While some songs hover in funkier territory, the strongest material on this mini-album comes when Lackners spirited playing interacts with Georgopoulos more spacious compositions. Not unlike the hovering spirituality of Alice Coltrane or the more playful moments of the ECM Records catalog, these songs are curious, kind, and open to explore. The live rendering of Georgopoulos work shapeshifts to the point where Ensemble Live takes on a life of its own outside the original material, breathing new life into already excellent songs as they wander further out. ~ Fred Thomas