Sasha Berliner: Fantome
Outside In Music

Capitalizing on momentum that's been steadily building, vibraphonist Sasha Berliner follows her 2022 release Onyx with her third and equally dynamic album Fantome. The music feels fresh, vital, and wholly of-the-moment, exciting tracks that pull the listener into their vortex and won't let go. Here is a sound that leaves categorizing behind and makes it seem like wasteful energy; better instead is to let the music speak on its own terms. As the notes on the inner sleeve attest, Fantome is “neither traditional nor futuristic, neither fully electronic nor acoustic,” but instead what happens when a contemporary jazz vibraphonist with a rock pedigree gives binary-free reign to her creative impulses and does so in the company of like-minded collaborators.

Complementing the core of Berliner, upright bassist Harish Raghaven, and drummer Jongkuk Kim are David Adewumi (trumpet, flugelhorn), Rico Jones (tenor saxophone), and pianists Taylor Eigsti and Lex Korten, who split keyboard duties. Fantome opens strongly with “U.M.M.G.,” Berliner's reharmonized take on Billy Strayhorn's "Upper Manhattan Medical Group.” Apparently an important part of her early jazz education, the tune initiates the album at high velocity with Eigsti riding combustible flurries of drums and bass, Kim and Raghaven grandly imposing themselves on the blistering performance, and the pianist setting the stage for Berliner's own light-speed statement. There's no time to think about categories when the attention's totally focused on the players' dazzle. The pace then slows for "Khan Younis,” its title a reference to the Palestinian city and the material spotlighting Berliner's gifts as a writer. Using a plaintive theme as scaffolding, she and her partners give voice to the anguish felt by those witnessing the human toll exacted by fighting in the Middle East. Though the music grows tumultuous, its tone is softened by the Juno-8 and CS-80 textures Berliner deploys as atmospheric sweetener.

The ensemble expands to a sextet for the breezy “Zenith” with Adewumi and Jones augmenting the vibes, piano, bass, and drums nucleus and the music coming as close to a conventional contemporary jazz statement as the album will. It's no less engaging for doing so, however, when the groove's hard and the collective execution blazing. Achieving a kindred kind of aerodynamic lift-off are “Construction” and “Private Investigation,” both splendid documents of Berliner's propensity for twisting rhythmic structures into arresting angular shapes that are complex but not lacking in momentum.

Its title inspired by Joachim Trier's 2021 film of the same name (a star-making turn for Renate Reinsve), "The Worst Person in the World” is the album's prettiest expression, a wistful, late-night ballad that finds Adewumi's flugelhorn, Raghaven's bass, and the leader's vibes wrapped in a lustrous blanket of brushed drums and Korten's Fender Rhodes. The Los Angeles-based Berliner's clearly having, as they say, a moment, with Fantome arriving at the same time as the equally strong release from Kaisa's Machine, Moving Parts, on which she appears. One expects other bandleaders will come calling too as awareness spreads of this intrepid vibraphonist's many talents.

March 2025