Ghost Notes - John Matthias & Jay Auborn (2023)

This was a very pleasant record, and then I read about how it makes use of a “robot drummer” to fashion live-in-the-room drum sounds from AI-related signal processing. The idea is to explore the relationships and processes that lead to humans improvising music. That made the whole thing a lot more interesting.

John Matthias is somewhat famous as a session violinist, but has done quite a few things as both an academic and a recording artist. A rather random find from years ago is the Tales From The Watercooler album, which sounds a bit like his 70s Brian Eno pop star turn, and features one of my very favorite songs.

I don’t know much about Auborn, except that he’s created some soundtrack music and has collaborated with Matthias before. This duo has created a wonderful blast of spooky, elegant soundtrack sounding music that weaves in and out of your consciousness.

The two human parts of the ensemble make some nice, roomy tunes with violin and piano. Then their drum interpreter figures out how and what to play along with it, and it’s really quite impressive.

Tracks I Liked

Dive Into This - Drones turn into muscular and cinematic polyrhythms

Long Time Dead - A chill, trip-hoppy intro with great acoustics that banks hard into a jungle-like breakbeat

Silver Solenoids - They let the drummer lead, which is kind of wild when you think about it.

Knowledge Is King
Kool Moe Dee
in which our protagonist goes to work