Point of Departure
patrick brennan + Jason Kao Hwang + Cooper-Moore + On Ka’a Davis
KnCurrent
Deep Dish dd-106
Marc Medwin
June, 2025
It should be no surprise, when a patrick brennan album is in the offing, that the title, KnCurrent, encapsulates an evocative set of sonic signifiers. Streams of simultaneity grace the soundstage when brennan’s alto, Cooper-Moore’s diddley-bo, Jason Kao Hwang’s electric violin and On Ka’a Davis’ guitar engage each other, and, most interesting, themselves, in fits, starts and waves of ever-evolving dialogue.
Spontaneous manifestation keeps interest high. We’re plunged unceremoniously but titillatingly into an amorphous notion of the dialogic as Cooper-Moore and Davis’ salvos, inaugurating slip apophatica,eschew steady pitch and warp temporal perspective. Only upon Hwang’s gradual emergence do the major-second dyads unifying everything clarify themselves, Cooper-Moore gliding and growling ascent beneath it all. Brennan listens. Only at 2:31 does he enter with an expansion of the centers the others have been exploring. The slow build and staggered entry is typical of the album, where, as often as not, the quartet fragments into duets, trios and the occasional solo. Dne Wol exemplifies the latter, a superb vehicle for the diddley-bo to demonstrate a good portion of its multivalent timbral ebb and swell. To hear brennan stretch, look no further than polyneuroceptive’s street-wise blues and funk, the diddley-bo suddenly taking on a percussive role, bumping and shuffling its way along the groove it creates. brennan pushes, darts around and slams against that foundational pulse, leaping register and dynamic thresholds in his syntax of typically brief phrases, pithy interrogatives and exclamations. Even that long trill at 3:45 hangs headlong over the backdrop of polyrhythmic interactions, acknowledging but refusing to allow them sway.
Then, there is the self-talk, the interaction with instrument and electronics that renders each soloist an ensemble. As the lusciously sparse ṣumud صمود progresses toward ensemble energy, Hwang’s use of delay morphs his violin into a call-and-response chamber group. His absolutely exquisite solo concluding the piece, one of the album’s finest moments, is a study in sustained restraint as overtones arc and descend toward silence. On the intriguingly and dialogically titled must be “Who Say”, Davis’ guitar effects proffer an upper-register melody that ghosts whatever he’s playing, peeking out of each fundamental with its own series of resonant slides and minuscule growls. What occurs as the upper-register material takes over defies verbiage even as it rends the concentric veils of pitch and rhythm, skewed repetitions only partially obscuring each tone as it seeks, in vain, to establish an identity. Cooper-Moore inhabits similarly ambiguous realms as his solo opening tewatatewenní:io slithers forward like a bass counterpart to Blind Willy Johnson’ slide guitar. Each stroke of the strings provides a layer of pointillism that guides the evolving melody from above, a bass aria salted and peppered with hints of accompanying ghost percussion all emanating from one instrument.
No one reading these pages will need any introduction to these musicians, and their feats of instrumental prowess should engender no surprise. It’s the amalgamation, the way each musician reacts to the other’s implied ensemble, that raises this creative foray to dizzying heights. polyneuroceptive concludes with one of these relatively rare occurrences. The creative streams form a river of celebratory utterance as each player inhabits a space opened up by layered exchange. Mode, groove, and timbre coalesce at these moments bursting with implication. The album builds toward and away from them. From end to end, such occasional instances are foregrounded, mysteriously, at the most unexpected but crucial moments, and, just as suddenly, they dissolve, leaving only memories of concurrence in convergence.