Jeremiah Cymerman - Body Of Light (5049 Records, 2024)

By Stef Gijssels

Clarinetist Jeremiah Cymerman has managed to create his own voice and musical genre, which is a feat in itself, and makes it hard to caterogise. It's not really jazz, or electroacoustical, or dark ambient, or modern classical, yet it has some of it all, and then some more. On the first two tracks the artist performs 'solo', on clarinet, synths, percussion, sequencer and bass, with heavy engineered layers of sound. On the third track he is accompanied by Christopher Hoffman on cello, Toby Driver on guitar and Mike Pride on drums, and on the fourth by Mike Pride on drums and Zachary Paul on violins. 

Cymerman has his own musical vision which he keeps purifying and altering over the years. I'm a fan of his idiosyncratic dark soundscapes, and I suggest you use our 'search' engine to get an overview of his recent work. When you listen to this album, it will be no surprise to learn that he is also a recording engineer, having worked with artists such as Vandermark, Wooley, Peter Evans, Harris Eisenstadt or Sylvie Courvoisier in the studio. He is not the musician who performs in other ensembles or who records a lot, yet the flow of albums is steady, working on his own voice on sound.

The major change on this album is the tone and mood of the music, which despite its long and slow pace, has a significantly more optimistic perspective on life. Even if the lonely clarinet often solos over a dense and constantly altering soundscape, as if alone in empty space, flying over the changing clouds of the other instruments, there is a brightness to the lyricism that is new, also illustrated by Driver's lightly arpeggiated guitar on "Pure Realm". 

And even if his universe is is still a lonely one, the quality of the work, and the wonderful collage of sound  show that this is a work of painstaking precision and dedication. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Watch a visual expression of the title track.