Lurking in the changing jazz and experimental landscape of Toronto is an eye-catching new centerpiece, bassist, composer, and bandleader Alex Lakusta's new recording "Island Ghosts". With this ambitious sophomore full-length album, Lakusta does not merely lay the first brick of his 2022 debut Transmit Slow, he targets a Forest through a scope he sharpens with every play.
"Island Ghosts" emerges as what Lakusta refers to as an abstract love story without words. It's a logical lens, and the album flourishes in emotional implication rather than stating, knitting intimacy and distance through multitracked instrumentation, kinetic pacing, and subtle interplay. No lyrics, but the story is clear, conveyed by surging crescendos, soft sections, and the spark between players.
In its 10 tracks and nearly 51 minutes, Lakusta shows a masterful use of mood and structure. The pieces themselves seem less individual compositions and more like chapters in the same story, each one bleeding into the next so logically that you can't help but think it's all part of some greater design. The end product is immersive, an album that calls for more than just listening but full immersion.
Superb highlight "Beat Mullet" bursts with kinetic energy, propelled by a groove that seems utterly breezy yet compulsively deliberate. The moment is a metronomic hinge that holds the album's more adventurous dispositions in place. It contrasts greatly with "Signals," which favors asceticism and space, threads of melody wandering in and out like faint signals. "Climbers" has an understated yet fearless momentum that builds in waves of textures atop one another, reaching its most climactic and emotionally resonant peak on the record.
One important aspect that makes "Island Ghosts" stand out is this balance, it remains technically advanced while also being emotionally relatable, abstract in a sense, but fundamentally tied to more geospatial forms of artistic practice. Given that, Lakusta's bass work acts at once as a foundation and a compass, while it helps anchor the ensemble, it also allows each instrument to exhale in its own piece of the narrative.
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