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Denman Maroney Quintet — Umwelt
(Bandcamp Neuma 243, 2025, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2026-02-10

Umwelt Cover art

For Umwelt, Denman Maroney reconvened his quintet about a year after releaseing The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, and it’s another set of fascinating and unconventional tunes that use a jazz quintet to play music that has more in common with experimental 20th Century composition than the blues or the standard songbook. Maroney is on piano, joined by Guillaume Orti on soprano and alto saxes, Robin Fincker on tenor sax and clarinet, Scott Walton on bass, and Samuel Silvant on drums. Orti is the newcomer, taking the place of vocalist Emilie Lesbros in the quintet’s previous incarnation. Some of the tracks are played as written, while others allow room for improvisation; Maroney’s hyperpiano technique appears on only one track, but there’s enough going on that it’s just one more color in the palette. Maroney has developed a theoretical system that he calls Temporal Harmony which he uses to compose his music, and it results in pieces that have a distinctive sound. While there’s some math involved, it’s not devoid of human qualities, and the result is fascinating. Rhythmic patterns of varying length are layered together so that the harmonies are distributed among the instruments, constantly shifting the flavor of the music. Coming from a background in progressive rock, as well as having listened to Philip Glass, Maroney’s work can be seen as an extension of their pattern-based ideas where the patterns are broken up and spread around the ensemble. There are also connections with Adam Rudolph’s cyclic work. Theoretical considerations aside, the music is enjoyable listening, and we don’t need to peek into the black box the composer uses to produce it.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Denman Maroney

More info
http://denmanfmaroney.bandcamp.com/album/umwelt

 

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