For those not in the know, Dance Card marks Charlottetown bassist and composer Adam Hill’s first album to place his bass playing at the center, merging his background in roots songwriting, classical composition, and experimental sound-art.

Hill has spent his career moving between musical worlds: five albums of roots-oriented songwriting, years as a member of Atlantic String Machine, experimental electronic music and sound-art installations, plus a parallel career composing contemporary classical music. Dance Card, released on September 18, brings those worlds together, but it also marks a new chapter for Hill: the first album to put his bass playing at the center.

The project grew out of the Charlottetown Improvisation Laboratory, a two-year concert series Hill created after the dissolution of Atlantic String Machine. All the musicians on Dance Card are alumni of the series, and each piece was originally written for one of those performances.

The studio process revisited this material from a new perspective. Each pair recorded the written composition but also improvised freely together. Hill then mined those improvisations for musical material, incorporating snippets of the spontaneous sessions into the production of each track. The result is an album where composition and improvisation aren’t opposing approaches, but parts of the same process.

A variety of collaborators bring remarkably different musical languages to the project, including harpist Caedda Enright, vocalist Luisa Güiza, guitarist Chris Corrigan, pipa player Tiffany Liu, bassist Maya Márquez, drummer Matt Bridges, guitarist Tom Gammons, vocalist Diana Delirio, and violinist Karen Graves.

1. Antlers [04:43]
2. El Sueño [05:09]
3. Whiplash [05:32]
4. The Little Bird’s Wild Ride [05:21]
5. Nick Got Arrested By the Cops [04:25]
6. (Do You Remember the) Escalators (at the Old Downtown Higbee’s) [06:40]
7. Circadian Rhythms [07:42]
8. Pingala’s Threads of Knowledge [06:29]
9. Apricot Leather [10:40]

On an album where traditional forms and experimental sounds continually interact, Hill opens on the beautifully crystalline Antlers and the rhythmically appealing, Luisa Güiza-sultry vocalized El Sueño and then the guitar is broken out for the melodiously sculpted Whiplash, Tiffany Liu then gifts us her pipa work (a pear-shaped, four-stringed instrument similar to a lute) on the Eastern-imbibed The Little Bird’s Wild Ride, before the upright bass leads the way on the deeply soulful Nick Got Arrested By the Cops.

Along next is the melodiously-grooved resonance of (Do You Remember the) Escalators (at the Old Downtown Higbee’s) which is in turn backed seamlessly by the gorgeously exquisite Circadian Rhythms, the new set rounding out on the sonically pulsing, Diana Delirio-harmonically vocalized Pingala’s Threads of Knowledge, coming to a close on the shifting musical sands within the resplendent fare of Apricot Leather.

Personnel:
Matt Bridges: drums (6); Chris Corrigan: electric guitar (3); Diana Delirio: vocals, percussion (8); Caedda Enright: harp (1); Tom Gammons: guitar (7); Karen Graves: violin, percussion (9); Luisa Güiza: vocals, percussion (2); Adam Hill: bass, percussion (1-9); Tiffany Liu: pipa (4); Maya Márquez Calle: electric bass (5)

Official Purchase Link

www.adamhillmusic.com