What a way for Astral Spirits to enter the vinyl game. Amaranth is an overwhelming joy to be-hear if you require the occasional burst of improvised anti-jazz with your morning coffee. Icepick, comprised of three legends in Chris Corsano, Nate Wooley, and Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten, bring a strong, sturdy game, bolstered by their collective experience and obvious sacridity they derive from locking horns like a trio of mountain goats. And when I mentioned ‘anti-jazz’ before I might have spoken too soon. Many of Haker-Flaten’s bass lines jump straight out of the post-bop playbook, as do some of Corsano’s galloping stick slashes. The feature player, in my mind, is Wooley, his expressive trumpet puckering up the ear like a pair of lemon-kissed lips. I’m a huge Gareth Flowers guy (check out his collab with Josh Mason, it’s insanely dark and cool-crisp action); between he and Wooley, it’s almost like every aspect of trumpet playing one could ever desire is covered, kit and caboodle. But back to Amaranth: Wow. Icepick is such a fitting moniker for this trio, their incisions deep and permanent, even if the skin above heals over. Take “Rare Rufescent,” the sidelong mammer-jammer that comprises the entirety of Side B, for example. This is a rare specimen indeed, Wooley frozen in a downward spiral like a plane with its tail shot out, zooming back to earth with the power of generations of heady players with small wallets and big hearts. I can’t imagine why bands like Icepick aren’t all over Corpus Christi, Texas (where I live, derp), in the months of April and May, sucking up the tolerable pre-summer vibes and blowin’ man, BLOWin’ BLOWin’ BLOWin’ like Gone With the Wind playing on a triple-IMAX screen at a volume that can be heard eons away. I digress, I digress, but don’t let my acrobatics distract you from the quality product at issue. I believe in my heart and soul that Amaranth is WHERE it’s AT, not in a traditional sense but in a limited-run scene kinda way. Astral Spirits for life, dawg.
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