Michael McNeill - Barcode Poetry (2024) [Hi-Res]

Michael McNeill is a pianist, improviser, and composer based in Buffalo, NY. While living in eastern Virginia, he started the quartet Allegories, with Baltimore-based musicians Susan Alcorn (pedal steel guitar), Dave Ballou (trumpet), and Shelly Purdy (vibraphone & percussion). Barcode Poetry is the culmination of this quartet's first tour in June 2022. The band spent a week on the road, developing McNeill’s tunes and deepening the band’s chemistry. In studio, the band distilled its sprawling improvisations into concise, focused performances. The record is marked by a gorgeous fluidity, with the diverse sororities of the four instruments often merging and emerging from one another in vividly colorful textures. The titular "Barcode Poetry" refers to McNeill's approach with the band, employing a rigid compositional framework—the black-and-white patterned keys of the piano, the mechanisms of valves, strings, pedals, and bars on his collaborators' instruments—to empower these machines yield to the musicians' poetic impulses. "Somehow this seemingly unwieldy combination of instruments proved to be an ideal vehicle for our individual and collective explorations,” McNeill explains. “Perhaps most importantly, our personalities meshed well, too. For those who didn’t get to hear us on the road, I hope the distilled recorded performances will provide a window into the collective energy we cultivated that week." Recommended if you like: Susan Alcorn, Paul Bley, Nate Wooley, Wadada Leo Smith, Tim Berne, Alexander Scriabin Album art by Ashley Pastore; layout by Ethan Hayden