Asterisms

Album review

Sean Ono Lennon's music has never stuck to a single path. He's remained consistently active since the '90s, sometimes releasing light alternative rock with Bossa Nova undertones, sometimes composing dramatic film scores, and sometimes coming up with wiggly prog jams with Primus' Les Claypool in their Claypool Lennon Delirium project. Released on John Zorn's Tzadik label, Lennon's completely instrumental album Asterisms calls on pieces of all of the above, carrying his artistic vision forward while not sounding much like anything he's made before. Lennon is joined by a host of serious players on these five tracks, with Asterisms personnel including storied musicians Devon Hoff, Yuka C. Honda, Michael Leonhart, Mauro Refosco, Ches Smith, Johnny Mathar, and João Nogueira. It's a blend of cosmic jazz and ambient cinema-scapes with undercurrents of progressive and experimental rock structure throughout. The eerie, meandering modes of opening track "Starwater" and the electric piano and odd-metered time signature of "Thinking of M" are both indebted to Radiohead, but both grow into dense jazz workouts. Layers of trumpet, edgy guitar, synth countermelodies, and tense dynamic playing all add to the monolithic style that comes to define the album. Some tunes are more traditionally jazz-informed (as on the fusion-leaning "Acidalia") and others, like the circular space blues of "Heliopause," tie together elements of dub, noir exotica, and the kind of interstellar jazz that Sun Ra spent his career perfecting. The broad canopy of sounds Asterisms puts forth leaves its deeper intentions open to interpretation, but the album's yearning melodies and wistful tone bear more of Lennon's personal stamp than its woozy flow might first suggest.

© Fred Thomas /TiVo