Ezra Feinberg Recumbant Speech

Recumbent Speech, Ezra Feinberg's (ex-Citay) second album, opens with a lament. Named for the Robert Frost poem, “Acquainted with the Night” was written under the cloud of one of the many devastating spectacles of injustice under our current regime. Repeating flutes and synths beam out of a low-end darkness, reflecting our collective sense of loss and alienation. Rising slowly, thickening with guitars and strings, “Acquainted with the Night” lifts off, and so too does the album from there. The second track, “Letter to my Mind,'' features the dynamic interplay of Feinberg's guitar with the loose and playful drumming of Tortoise's John Mcentire, both pushing and pulling atop a looping bass figure. "Palms Up" begins with a lockstep pulse recalling early Terry Riley before jumping into an Ashra-like jam with Afrobeat accents. Side B opens with "Ovation," a tryptic with McEntire on drums which sets a wide lens onto a sweeping landscape, with soaring flutes, wordless vocals, and a hypnotic bassline played on a humming fretless that recalls classic ECM jazz-fusion. The piece plunges into an ambient, interior space before reemerging with a guitar solo fried through an old Space Echo effects processor. The album's title-track finale, "Recumbent Speech," features the magical pedal steel of Chuck Johnson. Unwinding atop a bright analog synth pattern, Feinberg stretches textures of moog and acoustic guitar around Johnson’s lyrical steel, a nod to Cluster & Eno. The piece invokes the need to search deep within—ourselves and our communities—to combat overwhelming strains of darkness with a measure of hope.