Adam Berenson: Dwelling on Magic Mountain

Pianist and keyboardist Adam Berenson excels in various music genres including jazz, classical and electronica. His solo box-set Every Beginning is a Sequel (Dream Play, 2020) found the exploratory composer employing an arsenal of keyboards and high-end synthesizers in his original compositions. Berenson returns to that general cache of instruments for Dwelling on Magic Mountain, another solo outing.

The six lengthy tracks cover a lot of stylistic ground. Dark and portentous, "Cryptomnesia" opens the set in a place where ambient trance glides into what could pass for an otherworldly Brahms fugue. Berenson radically shifts gears with "Only the little things." Winding and highly animated, the piece is carried on perplexing waves. Another dramatic alteration of sound occurs with "The body as partial organ (a pure subject)." Haunting and more ambient, Berenson interjects bell-like accents which gently jar the senses and elevate the music with contrasting dynamics. "Help is on the way (for Weather Report)" is a sequencer-driven, somewhat weird, bubbling, repetitive piece. Berenson simulates looping woodwind sounds throughout, adding an opposing ethereal quality to often-dizzying footing. "Love's labors eradicated" closes the set. A dark, monastic and mysterious elegy, it is both lyrical and cryptic.

Berenson fully explores the many diverse influences he has touched on since his early releases, but he rarely travels the same path twice, Dwelling on Magic Mountain is unpredictable from the very beginning, not just due to the variety of musical styles, but because of how the pieces are executed. The album imparts the unmistakable sense that Berenson, the consummate genre-less composer, is having fun interacting with technology. He does so without completely scrambling his inventive compositions and improvisations. Berenson imbues his electronics and synthesizers with some semblance of organic life; he turns cold, hard circuitry into dimly lit back streets, intergalactic flights of fancy, and heartfelt lyricism.