Tom Schneider has his Isotopes (MACRO M72) with cover art of a bathroom mat from Hell. If coming out from shower one would be afraid to step on this fabric monstrosity depicting its shifting planes and chasms, a kind of psychedelic Grand Canyon fissure gone mad. On other hand one might emerge on the other side of that fissure in a better dimension with cleaner bath towels also.
Isotopes doesn’t exactly promise anything like that, but it’s an unusual and sometimes quite interesting piano album, where Schneider plays some form of dissipated modern jazz while he cloinks around with the sound of his piano using sampler and granular synthesiser in mad ways. Matter of fact it’s not just the piano sound that goes all goofy, but the very flow of his playing is often disrupted and mangled, sent off flying into owlish flip-flops and unexpected shapes from the greased stables. On at least one occasion (opening cut ‘Jagged’) you’ll think we’re off for a trip to the Conlon Nancarrow theme park, a now heavily touristified area, and there are a few other instances where he lets fly with impossibly-fast keyboard runs and needle-sharp diddling in a higher register. Schneider can’t stop meddling, even if the results end up grotesque and nearly-comical.
Not denying he can form a jazz shape and weave his way around chords, but he can’t sustain it for long. Hence really feeling the deficiency of structure, the lack of a single musical root or theme in each track. To put it another way, it’s not really clear what he’s departing from as he spreads his digital wings and flutters about the room, hoping to be perceived as the brave blue moth of adventure. (24/05/2023)