SPILL, Mycelium, Germany, Corvo Records, core 022 vinyl LP (2023)
In 2022, Berlin-based duo SPILL (Magda Mayas on clarinet and piano, Tony Buck on percussion) celebrated 20 years of working, recording and performing together and in collaboration with others, notably Damon Smith (double bass) and David Brown (guitar) with a new album, their fifth called “Mycelium”, and a small concert tour in Germany in October. This tour included special guests such as John Butcher, with whom Buck and Mayas have occasionally worked as the group Vellum. Incidentally we’ve met Mayas not that along ago here in the annals of The Sound Projector, as a member of Great Waitress along with Laura Altman and Monica Brooks.
On “Mycelium”, SPILL’s approach to free improvisation on piano (often prepared) and percussion results in a rich textured music that for the most part is serene and cool in temperament but which can harbour hidden tremors that now and again erupt in jittery, even knockabout tantrums. This is most apparent on first track “Aerate”, the longest of four pieces based around what appears to be the life cycle of the root-like structures (or mycelia) of fungi: over its 23-minute length, the track steadily spreads out its tendrils of disjointed piano melody, various sound effects and the occasional cymbal hiss, punctuated by sudden fits of percussion and piano frenzy. In its last few moments the track seems to slow down but the music’s progress becomes jerky and disordered, as if the mycelium network it might be describing is starting to disintegrate at the same time that it keeps on growing.
The other three tracks on the album (“Pure”, “Patina” and “Residue”) are much shorter and as a result have clear personalities. “Pure” proceeds like a religious ritual carried out by Buddhist monks in some far Eastern territory, with its gong bashes, a thumping drum, twangy bell tones and quivering drones. “Patina” takes place in some interstellar spaceship lounge where a jazz band drums up a storm of noise in the far background while silvery tones bob about for attention in zero gravity. It seems quite cool and unruffled, and yet there’s a tension behind the fragmented melodies and effects that the background thrashing is drawing our attention to. Slow piano melodies and subdued percussion rhythm dominate “Residue” in a moody, almost elegiac track despite the restless drumming behind the piano and ambient effects.
For most of its running time, this album is easy on the ear though it does require deep listening in a quiet environment so that its full richness and contrast of sounds as piano and percussion alternate between doing battle against one another and striving together over a vast territory of fungi networks. Each track needs to be savoured for the atmospheres it conjures up. “Mycelium” may end up infiltrating your head and spreading its branches just as fungi mycelia spread through the soil. Don’t say you weren’t warned!