Matthew Shipp
Within the voluminous catalogue that pianist Matthew Shipp has created over the last three and a half decades, his solo piano work has charted a unique and compelling pathway for the evolution of the instrument’s vocabulary. On his latest album, Codebreaker, that path turns yet another unexpected corner, continuing to venture further while taking a surprising turn inward.
Due out November 5 on both CD & LP via drummer Whit Dickey’s label TAO Forms, Codebreaker finds Shipp in an uncharacteristically meditative state of mind. Though the language is unmistakably his own, the usual violent attacks, dense clusters and insistent circularity are in short supply, replaced by harmonic nebulae that luxuriate in the mysterious resonances that Shipp conjures from the keyboard. As ever with the work of this consummate improviser, intention had very little to do with it.
“I was actually shocked at how introspective the album was when I listened back to it,” Shipp admits. “If I try to dissect my motivations, which are not always conscious and which just happen on their own, I see myself really basking in harmony. I’m interested in trying to wring all of the harmonics from the piano that I possibly can, and with that in mind, any set of harmonics has a set of melodic fragments that are implied.”
Current Release
2021
TAO Forms
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