Tigue: Strange Paradise
New Amsterdam Records / NNA Tapes

If Tigue's three percussionists sound particularly in sync on Strange Paradise, the Brooklyn-based group's follow-up to its 2015 debut album Peaks, it's attributable, at least in part, to how long they've collaborated: apparently the Ohio-born band members, Matt Evans, Amy Garapic, and Carson Moody, have worked together since they were practically children. On the new set, co-released by New Amsterdam Records (CD, digital) and NNA Tapes (vinyl), three pieces are presented, two featuring Tigue alone and the other the trio augmented by guitarists Benedict Kupstas and Seth Manchester, bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause, Wurlitzer organist Trevor Wilson, and OP-1 synthesizer player Eliot Krimsky.

Tigue's sound arsenal includes the usual suspects for a percussion group—vibraphone, cymbals, shaker, drums, woodblock, maraca, kalimba, roto toms, and so forth—but the trio also enhances its presentation with guitar, cassette tapes, and synthesizers (Casio 403, Juno 60, Moog Sub 37). Soundwise, the album's three tracks draw heavily from drone, trance, post-rock, and krautrock traditions, and align themselves effectively to the vinyl format in featuring two tracks totaling twenty minutes and the third twenty-one. Of course tight ensemble playing is especially important in the case of a percussion-based outfit where expectations of rhythmic precision are high and any cracks in the players' performance are particularly noticeable; put simply, any missteps are magnified when the members are expected to interlock seamlessly. Needless to say, no such cracks are audible in Tigue's case, at least not on this recording.

The expanded line-up elevates the opening “Triangle” with a resplendent array of colours and textures, with the synth and organ components imbuing it with a hypnotic feel and the percussion emphasizing syncopated rhythms and insistent propulsion. With vibraphone added and a polyrhythmic transition into post-rock territory, the tune begins to suggest a prototypical Tortoise jam, though the repeating keyboard chords ensures it never severs its connections to trance and minimalism. Guitars gradually move to the forefront, their chiming textures amplifying the material's trippy vibe in a twelve-minute piece whose multi-scenic journey's never less than engaging.

The second piece, “Contrails,” downplays rhythmic drive for meditative, drone-styled entrancement, Tigue evoking a peaceful oasis by draping kalimba plucks and sawblade shimmerings across a softly murmuring base. “Quilts” (of the three tracks, the only one solely credited to Evans) begins with a seeming nod to Reich's Four Organs, but the reference is quickly obscured by the advent of motorik mechano patterns. In the twenty minutes that follow, the trio keeps things interesting by regularly modifying the rhythms and drum grooves until the material begins to seem as logically intertwined as a Rubik's Cube. It's not easy to make 9/4 time sound funky, but in Tigue's hands it begins to seem like the most natural thing in the world.

June 2018