Lynn Avery and Cole Pulice have been collaborators since 2018, first linking up in Minneapolis earlier than hopping to the West Coast to hitch the Oakland music scene, however they took off on their 2022 debut, To Dwell & Die in Area & Time. Equally impressed by each Coltranes—John’s beatific overblowing and A Love Supreme’s compact construction, Alice’s ashram-era environments—it was successful, by ambient jazz requirements. It rapidly impressed a reissue of Carpet Cocoon, Avery’s early-2020 debut as Iceblink, whose pairing of nylon-string guitar and sound collage turned out to suit completely with a Covid-era zeitgeist enamored with area recordings. In the meantime, the saxophonist Pulice has turn into a punk grandchild to the Coltrane-Sanders–Ayler father-son-holy ghost equation and put out arguably the very best launch on Longform Editions, no imply feat.
Phantasy & Actuality, the duo’s second full-length collaboration, leans lots nearer to the imaginative and prescient of Avery’s work as Iceblink. As a result of Pulice has been each boundary-pushing and prolific in the previous couple of years whereas Avery has launched little or no, those that’ve adopted the previous’s profession is likely to be shocked by how conventionally pretty Phantasy is in comparison with Pulice’s pitch-bent odysseys, like 2022’s Avery-featuring Scry. Avery referred to as Carpet Cocoon a “consolation album” to “retreat to throughout winter,” first placing it out in mid-January 2020 (on the time she lived in Minneapolis, which, not like the Bay Space, truly has winter). It’s no coincidence Phantasy seems as the times creep in the direction of the solstice, nor that the solar appears to be virtually on the opposite aspect of the horizon on the album artwork: This can be a cozy file, to be cherished by way of the darkish months.
This time, the reference level isn’t free jazz however the extra sedate descendants of that type that emerged on the opposite aspect of Miles Davis’ “He Liked Him Madly” within the ’70s. The 2000s work of Harold Budd specifically involves thoughts, with the decision and response between mournful piano and lonesome choir synth on “Moonlight in an Empty Room” uncannily evoking “The Candied Room” from Budd’s 2000 Atlantic debut The Room, whereas Pulice’s use of clarinet brings to thoughts the rosy chamber items on Budd’s strongest late-career album, Avalon Sutra. These wishing Suzanne Kraft had by no means gone full dream-pop and as a substitute saved on making bleary Balearic fantasies like Passive Aggressive will probably be delighted by a stretch of songs in the direction of the center that includes Charlie Bruber, whose upright bass known as on to impart gravitas slightly than a rhythmic anchor.