Michael McNeill – Barcode Poetry (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 56:52 minutes | 492 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Infrasonic Press
Michael McNeill is a pianist, improviser, and composer based in Buffalo, NY. While living in eastern Virginia, he started the quartet Allegories, with Baltimore-based musicians Susan Alcorn (pedal steel guitar), Dave Ballou (trumpet), and Shelly Purdy (vibraphone & percussion). Barcode Poetry is the culmination of this quartet’s first tour in June 2022. The band spent a week on the road, developing McNeill’s tunes and deepening the band’s chemistry. In studio, the band distilled its sprawling improvisations into concise, focused performances. The record is marked by a gorgeous fluidity, with the diverse sororities of the four instruments often merging and emerging from one another in vividly colorful textures. The titular “Barcode Poetry” refers to McNeill’s approach with the band, employing a rigid compositional framework—the black-and-white patterned keys of the piano, the mechanisms of valves, strings, pedals, and bars on his collaborators’ instruments—to empower these machines yield to the musicians’ poetic impulses.
Tracklist:
1-1. Michael McNeill – Timeigrant (07:47)
1-2. Michael McNeill – Barcode Poetry (06:51)
1-3. Michael McNeill – Elegy (07:35)
1-4. Michael McNeill – As a Metaphor (take 2) (10:25)
1-5. Michael McNeill – Branches (04:02)
1-6. Michael McNeill – As a Metaphor (take 1) (09:30)
1-7. Michael McNeill – Double Memory (10:40)
