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The Ground That Holds You as You Fall Forever
David Leach
Label: Adhyâropa Records
Released: 2025
Views: 501
Tracks
Chrysalis; Ravens; Shiko; New Sky; Drawing Monsters; Fireworks in His Pockets for the Funeral Pyre (A Joyful Heart); Moth; Antiphonal Trance; The Ground That Holds You as You Fall Forever; BONUS: Chrysalis (Piano/Sax Duo).
Personnel
Album Description
At the intersection of accessible songcraft and the avant-garde there’s a sweet spot for fans of improvised music who want to be not only challenged, but elevated and entertained. This has been the home turf for artists from Keith Jarrett to Tigran Hamasyan, and to that congregation Adhyâropa Records is thrilled to offer The Ground That Holds You As You Fall Forever (Adhyâropa Records ÂR00109) by Massachusetts-based pianist, composer, and poet David Leach. Featuring nine gorgeously constructed compositions as well as the extraordinary interplay of Leach with their collaborators Lihi Haruvi (saxes), John Lockwood (bass), and Dor Herskovits (drums), The Ground That Holds You As You Fall Forever aims for the sweet spot and connects. “I wanted to make a record that captured the range of the music that I like, which from every direction has inspired me and how I think about myself as a musician,” Leach says. “I’m drawn to modern classical music on equal footing with jazz, folk, rock, even metal.” When prompted, Leach rattles off artists as stylistically broad as Joni Mitchell, Philip Glass, Olivier Messaian, and Swedish extreme metal band Meshuggah as voices that informed Leach’s writing for The Ground That Holds You Forever. This is evident from the drop; the contemplative opening track, ‘Chrysalis’ segues directly into bass register shock that opens ‘Ravens.’ After a breath, the deluge – Herskovits’ pounding drums and Haruvi’s primal saxophone carry the listener along a wave to the song’s declamatory apotheosis. We’re 10 minutes in, and we’ve already heard the entire breadth of the past century of music. “As musicians it’s very convenient to silo ourselves within a genre, but that’s never how I’ve approached my own creative voice,” Leach adds. When asked to explain their connection to music as seemingly irreconcilable as Philip Glass’ minimalism and Meshuggah’s maximalism, Leach waives off the dissonance. “With both of them, I hear an ability to immerse the listener in a world of their own construction, a soundscape only they could have built. Those extremes, and the commitment they embody, are what I’m most excited about. There’s a lot of drama in all of these artists’ music – drama that unfolds at different speeds and through different vocabularies but that communicates itself in an equally immersive way.” Leach was attuned to music from a very early age. In high school, already an advancing pianist, they discovered the music of James Booker and Professor Longhair and the direction of their musical life was set. “There was something about the combination of James Booker’s groove and his obvious virtuosity – all in the service of deeply personal expression – that grabbed me. He made the piano sound like water and everything was just so intensely felt.” It was in this same spirit that their second great creative love, poetry, entered their life. “Poetry has always informed my music. With poetry, just as in the music I’m passionate about, the artist really has to show up as a whole person, and I’d like to think I bring a degree of emotional honesty and vulnerability to my music. Poets and musicians who are willing to take risks – aesthetic and expressive – are the ones who most inspire me. John Berryman, Jorie Graham, or Frank Bidart, for example. In my mind, some of their work is like a late Coltrane album in its ambition and risk-taking. It’s searching for a new intensity of presence, not afraid to show the artist grappling with their own limits.” With their collaborators Haruvi, Lockwood, and Herskovits, Leach finds travelers willing to journey to the extremes; in particular Haruvi, whose work here would be a star-making turn if she weren’t already a well-admired figure among musicians. A professor of improvised music at both Berklee and MIT concurrently, Haruvi’s muscular playing leaps off the track and into the exosphere. “Every phrase of Lihi’s playing is shaped, expressive, and full of power and intentionality. It never fills space for its own sake. On this record I asked her to play mostly sopranino sax. It was her first experiment with the instrument and of course she plays it beautifully. It still has her characteristic breathiness and vocal quality but it also occupies the high contrasts and extremes that I wanted to define this record.” The Ground That Holds You As You Fall Forever is indeed a document of coexisting extremes – a meditative virtuosity, and a delicate power. “I want the audience to feel invited to a certain kind of presence," Leach says. “That feeling that we’re always in flux but there’s a stability there when we occupy this space together. That is what I hope this music embodies.”
Album uploaded by Michael Ricci
