Michael Byron, Bridges of Pearl and Dust, Specially Priced EP

The Radical Tonality of music on the Cold Blue label to me is important, as it steps beyond Minimalism and blurs its on occasion rather sharp matter-of-factness. A new and good example (and a few more new ones I'll be covering later) is in Michael Byron's Bridges of Pearl and Dust (Cold Blue 0057) a specially priced 15 minute EP that features Ben Phelps on multi-tracked vibraphones.

Often enough you hear a shading of New Music with a hint of the trajectory of Avant Jazz in Byron's works and that is so here. It is a series of multi-articulated rigorously notated arpeggiated interlocking rootsy tonal-diatonic lines that have a modal-pentatonic base implication but not strictly in some formulaic way. The music switches pitch centers now and again to keep ultra-fresh and in the end it all makes wonderfully perfect sense.

The 15 minute span is just about right--so you go away very revived and immersed.

Good music! Listen.