Matt Chobote — Nagual

Nagual is an album that sits somewhere between modern chamber music and avant-garde jazz. The seven-piece CD release shifts between tautly uneasy, clunkily shadowy, and broodily edgy.

Matt Chobote is a Canadian composer & pianist who has been active since the mid-2010s. The pieces offered up here are relatively brief/ short compared with normal modern classical terms- lasting between four and seven minutes.

The seven pieces featured all date from 2022, and are all played by members of the Juniper Fuse Ensemble. This takes in: Matt Chobate- prepared microtonal piano. Lotte Anker- Soprano saxophone. Simon Toldam-prepared microtonal piano.  Peter Brun- percussion, and  Matias Escudero Seibæk- percussion.

We move from “Nightside Of The Bhedam Tree” with its tautly foreboding weave of tensely bounding keys, detailed & tense percussion, and atmospherically baying horn work. Onto “Urobic  Memory” with its hauntingly baying tone clangs,  plucking piano strings unease, and steady brooding forkings.

There’s the tolling, creaking,  clunking, and moodily wavering echo chamber feel of “Stalagmites”. With the release playing out with the doomily bound percussion, tolling keys, and subtle drifting horn bays of “Into Womb”.

Nagual certainly is a release that captures a very distinct form of sonic brood, dark disquiet, and edgy unease.  I was somewhat on the fence as to whether to give this a three or a four mark, but I will go with the higher mark as Chobote has created something rather original here.