For the individuality of his methods, sense of space and tonal subtlety, American guitarist Ben Monder has long sounded like an ECM artist, but Amorphae is his late debut for the German label. And though he shares Bill Frisell’s palette of sustain, delay and reverb effects, Monder now follows his own path. This album, begun in 2010 with Paul Motian, was left incomplete after the drummer’s death. The finished disc features free-jazz percussionist Andrew Cyrille on four tracks and synth player Pete Rende on two. Playing unaccompanied on conventional and baritone guitars, Monder embraces soft tone poems of humming sustains and eerie echoes, as well as wilder David Torn-like tumults. There is a vivid account of Oh What a Beautiful Morning (displaying Motian’s delicate brushwork and nuanced tom-tom touches), full of expansive strumming and violin-like glides, while the dialogues with Cyrille and Rende are more abstract investigations of cyclical melodies, dissected harmonies and asymmetrical rhythms. His soundworld is a shade private and austere, but ECM’s blessing should alert a wider audience to Monder’s talents.
