In March of last year, six musicians congregated in a house in Los Angeles, intent on making something original. Their band, BANANA, originally assembled as an opening act and backing group for the singer Cate Le Bon, included members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Warpaint as well as Le Bon herself, coming off of her excellent 2016 release Crab Day. The ensemble was helmed by Josiah Steinbrick, a producer and fixture of the L.A. music scene who’s collaborated with Devendra Banhart, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Tim Presley of White Fence.
The musicians had gotten familiar with each other while touring Crab Day, and it seems that they were in an even looser mood than usual when they came together to record what would become LIVE, a mix that uses original compositions by Steinbrick as a jumping-off point for the rest of the musicians to improvise over. Influenced by the recordings of the trumpeter and composer Jon Hassell and incorporating the work of Arthur Russell, the playful, energetic LIVE was originally recorded as a special for the online radio station Dublab. But it proved to have staying power, so Leaving Records has issued it as a standalone album this month.
LIVE is comprised of four tracks named for the first four letters of the alphabet, and runs 24 minutes its length. Its tracks are predicated not on guitar, piano or drums, but on loops of vibraphone and woodwind, with other instruments chiming in wildly, a rainforest cacophony layered over the slower, deeper patterns of a lush musical ecosystem. Tracks don’t develop in a linear fashion but instead grow outward in strange, unexpected directions. On “A” and “B,” this growth is segmented, as a second loop tags in to replace the first at the midpoint of each song. “C” and “D” are more coherent and as a result, more easily digestible.
Depending on the listener’s mood, the record’s early going can be frustratingly chipper. All those plinking mallets and that farting brass come to feel grating, a forced smile that stays on too long. But occasional moments of shade dull the insistent sunshine, providing some relief as you delve further into the record. Plaintive strings on the back side of “B” and the sudden jangle of piano two and half minutes through “C” cool things down, and “D” by far the shortest track here, is decidedly the darkest, introducing a somber note that anchors an otherwise escapist record in the real world.
The compositions here forsake Western divisions of major and minor keys. This gives all the tracks a modal, somewhat hard-to-place flavor, particularly the baroque “B,” which makes use of ceremonial music from Southeast Asia and incorporates a minimalist piece from the Estonian composer Heino Jürisalu, before morphing into a tribute to Arthur Russell’s ’70s work that includes a yearning sample of electric piano from Russell himself.
Steinbrick has said that he wants the music to sound “exotic” and “pleasant,” both characteristics that LIVE nails easily. But after a half dozen listens, despite some of its more outré qualities, LIVE starts to sound familiar, even tightly controlled. The members of BANANA know each other well, and on the record, they seem capable of anticipating their tourmates improvisational tendencies, like a conversation at the family dinner table where it’s always obvious who’s going to speak up next. That makes for a strikingly coherent improvised album. But it also dulls some of the surprises that LIVE might have otherwise offered, making something that was supposed to feel fresh and alive, seem occasionally, if not unhappily, predictable.
