"Echo Deep" - Joe Santa Maria (Orenda Records, 2023)

     "Echo Deep", in sight and sound, makes one question reality in a positive sense. The collage on the cover is an accurate projection of the freewheeling, deeply personal and always vivd content of the nine pieces included here with each layer like a window into some other part of the psyche, all occurring simultaneously. Listening through felt like I was in the center of a minimalist opera with instrumental sections cast as characters or perhaps like a joyous rave taking place inside of a single-celled organism. What I'm trying to say is that Joe Santa Maria has made a thing here which provides a highly unique and connected listening experience that is undeniably fun as much as it is fascinating.

 

    The album begins with "Apix Groob" (a nod to Aphex Twin) and immediately introduces several unmistakable qualities that carry on throughout the set. There's the notion of accretion. Most of the forms in this music feature sections of instruments gradually entering one by one and this creates an increasingly strong perception of depth, nuance and complexity that amplifies and augments deceptively simple harmonic schemes into thick impressionistic stacks of ecstatic bliss in the manner of Duke Ellington or especially Maurice Ravel. 

 

    It soon becomes apparent that this approach is versatile enough to host a gamut of emotional, stylistic and referential vibes. "Soap Box" takes its primary cues from the film music of Ryuichi Sakamoto and even Philip Glass. It boasts a family of longing, elegiac winds and strings that coexist in a modal framework where black keys find no purchase. This piece was one where I especially felt the significance and role of single notes or melodies as actors in a sonic drama. Bright, saturated colors throughout. 

     

    Another common facet of this music are fluid juxtapositions of borrowed elements which normally don't get to interact. Take "Mad Max" for instance. Things launch off with an immediate, menacing sort of robotic groove laying somewhere between IDM and Industrial. By itself, that is a sufficient base for something neat but Santa Maria throws a curveball first by introducing a Salsa groove in the horns and then by featuring a heavily treated soprano sax solo by JJ Byars that sounds closer to a dial-up modem than anything else. It's an awe-inspiring bouquet of ideas!

 

    Elsewhere, there are two sublime miniatures called "Pathways" with the first piece evoking a tiny fairy tale contrasting with the second piece that is mired in a funereal bog. The remaining pieces bring one more cool feature and that is the fusing of mechanical and organic palettes in the orchestration such that they become inseparable from each other. This was most evident in the blend between various saxes and electric keyboards on "Lullaby" or organ with saxes in "Play Play". 

 

    The closing track "Where's Annie?" comes across almost like a gag-reel over the closing credits of a film and is also the most striking piece in terms of ambitious structural approaches. It begins with a maudlin string section before abruptly dumping listeners into the middle of a party with chattering and laughing voices and barking dogs over a bizarre marching funk ostinato. The instruments soon begin mocking the human and animal voices and Santa Maria seizes the moment to begin manipulating the samples now into a carnivalesque racket before another twist into a knotty unison line with the densest clusters imaginable. The piece as a whole reminded me of the form of "Bolero" and come to think of it, all of the pieces here gave me that impression. I love that piece, btw.

 

    Those expecting something with solos over the form, functional changes or a traditionally cast rhythm section will be swept away down all the winding, oblique paths taken on "Echo Deep". It's a stunning and bold achievement. An instant favorite release of mine this year.