Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Sean Ali: My Tongue Crumbles After

21

Sean Ali: My Tongue Crumbles After

By

View read count
Sean Ali: My Tongue Crumbles After
Improvisational bassist Sean Ali began his musical life as a guitarist, studying sitar and oud along the way. The Ohio native has been in New York City for more than a decade now and performs as a solo bassist, an ensemble player, and a spoken-word artist. He is the founder of The Mudbath Orchestra, a large ensemble that has been performing in and around NYC since 2011. My Tongue Crumbles After is Ali's solo bass debut album and features eight improvisations augmented on several tracks with sound effects played on cassette tape.

On the opening track, "Salutations" the natural voice of the bass is obscured in a mix of nature sounds and—briefly—a disembodied spoken passage. The acoustic bass stands alone on "Fingerdeep," a brief exercise in abstract plucking that precedes "Missing Persons Report," where the bowed bass buzzes like a swarm of bees. "Beneath the Cobbles" features a long-sustained tone through industrial noise and "Heartstack" returns to natural field recordings interacting with low, resonant notes from the bass.

Among Ali's eight original pieces, there are none that would fit into conventional categories. Within the empirical program, he offers a wide range of sonic experiments. Whether the squeaky wheel sound of "Lime Works," the minimal percussion of "Queens Gothic" or the bowed drone of the closing piece, "Hunger," Ali—a student of global linguistics—has found a unique platform for his narratives on the eclectic label, Neither/Nor Records.

Track Listing

Salutations; Fingerdeep; Missing Persons Report; Beneath the Cobbles; Heartstack; Lime Works; Queens Gothic; Hunger.

Personnel

Sean Ali
guitar, steel

Sean Ali: double bass, cassette player.

Album information

Title: My Tongue Crumbles After | Year Released: 2017 | Record Label: Neither/nor Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.