On their 2024 album Last Circle in a Slowdown, Big Bend took concert recordings and reconfigured them, bending that live energy into weird, spacious and intricate constructions. Leader Nathan Phillips does something similar for his project’s first Lagniappe Session, turning these covers into loose, free and focused interpretations of the source material. Slowdown bore the light but pervasive imprint of Talk Talk, especially Mark Hollis’ tentative yet determined phrasing and breathy, plein air timbre. Phillips’ first two Lagniappe selections tend toward a somewhat more traditional folk-rock direction, while his final cut pays homage to one of America’s greatest and most eccentric street performers/composers. Big Bend unravels and respools each song, changing nearly everything but holding on to the elusive spirit that gives it life.
Category: Big Bend
Big Bend :: Last Circle In A Slowdown
The third album from pianist/singer Nathan Phillips’ Big Bend project blends experimental methods with time-tested tradition. Working with avant-jazz master Shahzad Ismaily and a varied ensemble including Jen Powers of Rolin/Powers Duo and violinist Zosha Warpeha, Phillips transforms delicate folk songs into strange collages and elliptical ballads. At times reminiscent of the fluid, gauzy extrapolations of Talk Talk, Last Circle in a Slowdown might have more in common with Joan of Arc’s controversial ProTools workout The Gap. But Big Bend doesn’t embrace the alienation that comes with such studio manipulation and digital disruption, instead finding a lithe grace in the interstices of the regular and the revolutionary. Untroubled but eerie, Big Bend finds its own kind of ambiguous beauty.