Comprising four highly regarded and innately skilled jazz and improvisational musicians, Tropos are a unique and experimental supergroup. Comprised of Ledah Finck on violin, Yuma Uesaka on clarinet and bass clarinet, Phillip Golub on piano, and Aaron Edgcomb on drums and percussion, this foursome has accomplished a great deal in other iterations. However, as Tropos, the quartet truly shine as something unique, intense, dazzling, and often playful. With Switches, their latest album, they continue this trend with no visible signs of slowing down.
Straddling a line somewhere between modern classical chamber music and the improvisatory nature of free jazz, their music is spiky, frenetic, and filled with melody and exquisite stretches of breathtaking instrumental prowess. It’s also generous, playful, and greets the listener with open arms. A true collective foursome, each member composed two to three of the record’s songs, beginning with Ueska’s “Witchess”. The piece incorporates plenty of scratchy, percussive sounds in the beginning movement, dancing around each other before Finck’s violin takes on some inspired, wild moments.
It’s on Finck’s composition, “The Best Donuts in Philadelphia”, where Ueska’s clarinet solos out into the stratosphere, as the other three join in enthusiastically. The music’s breathless excitement occasionally takes time to shift gears to a more languid pace, as on Golub’s haunting, funereal “Between the Times”, which begins with some low-end growls that recall the solemnity of a didgeridoo, and proceeds with sparse, piano-based solemnity. Edgcomb’s “Aerator Debris” is largely cut from the same cloth, but with occasional spikes and rough edges that recall early Lounge Lizards records.
However, there is an urgency and immediacy to much of what the group do here, as evident in the wild hysteria of the single “Headline”, which only builds in intensity as the song progresses. It’s also the case on the breathless title track, as the different instruments veer between manic soloing and the roar of cacophony. Tropos possess a seemingly boundless energy supply, but it’s delivered smartly and with brilliant flair for instrumental fluidity and a sense of adventure. Switches is them at their very best.
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