Lingyuan Yang - Cursed Month (2025)

You know something's happening when you don't know what it is but you hear that it's different and you keep on listening for 45 minutes even when it grates. That's the setup with the 24-year-old microtonal guitarist Lingyuan Yang's debut trio recording, "The Cursed Month."

The beast announces itself with the twisted grandiosity of "Ritual Fire," Shinya Lin's piano alternately a pompous storm and a trickle of rain to merge with the delicate electricity of Yang's insectlike quarter-tones, while Asher Herzog's drums thunder commentary and end the 10-minute piece with an emphatic cymbal sizzle.

And the transgressions never let up from there, sometimes feeling like jagged Cecil Taylorish improvisation ("Moondial," "Bloodstain"), sometimes entering highly composed and rhythmically difficult terra incognita, as on the instrumental trade-offs and surge-fades of "The Song of the Mist." "Spring Snow" fulfills the beautifully evil portent of its beginning with a sudden attack like a psycho from a dark alley.

The textures and ensemble work come together wonderfully. Yang's ultraclean guitar tone, usually in the high treble clef, cuts through everything and makes you aware not only that you're hearing many microtonal notes, but more important, WHY you're hearing them: for their emotional impact. He sometimes makes chords with them, too, and the effect is like a rake down your spine. Lin is a most responsive and dynamic pianist, seeming at first to be using standard tuning, but here and there there might be "prepared" passages. And Herzog sounds as if he's been throwing his weight around this trio for years, his full-kit assault perfectly balanced in the mix.

Yang also composes for string quartets, wind quartets and such. He's a phenomenon, apparently. "Cursed Month" is more evidence.