The Answer Is In The Beat

Kate Gentile: Find Letter X (Pi Recordings, 2023)

October 21, 2023 at 5:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Drummer and composer Kate Gentile’s newest opus contains three CDs, each over an hour long, and each is a dense, complex world of its own interconnected with the wider universe of the other discs. The other players are saxophonist/clarinettist Jeremy Viner, synth and keyboard player Matt Mitchell, and bassist Kim Cass. The electronic parts get a lot of short, sizzling, piercing interludes to themselves, like the very first track of the first disc. “Laugh Magic” is dense mathcore jazz that constantly switches time signatures, and already at this point in the album, all bets are off, there’s no telling what’s in store. The band navigate through corkscrew rhythms and more straightforward parts, sometimes overlapping or criss-crossing, and to me it all sounds perfectly composed and arranged and executed, not random or intentionally difficult. It’s hard to even pick out standout moments, because it really does feel like the whole album is meant to be taken as a singular journey. The press release says the album was inspired by the third season of Twin Peaks, and how it has an extremely complex story line and abstract logic of its own, and even though there isn’t a narrative connecting the pieces on this album, it’s similar in how it just completely subverts expectations and goes in its own directions and doesn’t wait for you to catch up with it. Some parts do deserve mention though, like the manic prog-metal-jazz of disc 2 opener “R.A.T.B.O.T.B”. Really the whole second disc keeps up that intensity, with tracks like “Garbage Juice” adding more synth chaos. “Importunate Babble” piles all the elements up into one of the album’s most intense, overwhelming compositions. Disc 3 opens with the 10-minute monster “Psychoradiant”, and cools down somewhat for a few moments, with a bit more emphasis on piano, but still with fast, rapidly evolving rhythms. “Spectrescope” seems to start with mellower tones and a more spacious approach but it gets worked up and knotty by the end. Then “Quantum Exits” is a 13 minute tour de force, but the much shorter “Epitome” which follows is a more concentrated burst of energy and color. Crazily enough, this isn’t even the most massive thing Gentile and Mitchell have created — they released a 6 CD set titled Snark Horse two years ago. After listening to Find Letter X a few times, I think I’m almost ready for that one.