[AUM101] - CD in 4-panel digipak
Whit Dickey: drums, compositions
Mat Maneri: viola, compositions
Matthew Shipp: piano, compositions
"The expressive expanse of this music is held to account by the tautness of the emerging forms: not a single note is played in vain .. utterly compelling – a sound world unlike anything else in jazz." –Jazzwise
"Vessel in Orbit has the air of an abstract drama, the three storyteller-improvisors utterly in sync" –DownBeat
"8/10 Stars" –PopMatters
Vessel in Orbit presented the first new group music in over a decade from singular drummer-composer Whit Dickey. It is a richly melodic and deeply focused album; structural integrity and emotional resonance are paramount throughout.
Created together with the impeccable improvisers Mat Maneri on viola and pianist Matthew Shipp, each of these men has a lifetime commitment to creative music, and they share a musical relationship with one another that dates back decades. Dickey’s wonderfully inviting compositional structures provide fruitful platforms for his esteemed colleagues and, par for his work as a leader, he cedes the spotlight to the collective as a whole. Wide-open listening and fluid expression abound here. Man, it's a wicked set that features Maneri in mad blossom, with Shipp & Dickey dealing some post-millennium hard blues as a bed toward same.
In the 90s, Whit Dickey was an elemental member in the groups of both David S. Ware and Matthew Shipp. His tremendous debut as a leader was Transonic followed by Life Cycle (which also featured Maneri & Shipp). He re-joined Shipp’s trio from 2007-12, and in 2015 appeared once again on the pianist’s beautiful (essential) tribute, To Duke. This album also marks the welcome return of Mat Maneri to AUM Fidelity, who was previously featured on the sublime A Cloud of Black Birds & Soul Search together with guitarist Joe Morris, as well as his own epic album production by the Maneri Ensemble, Going To Church.
1. Spaceship 9 - 05:14
2. Space Walk - 06:37
3. Dark Matter - 05:58
4. Galaxy 9 - 09:13
5. Turbulence - 04:51
6. To a Lost Comrade - 05:39
7. Space Strut - 04:29
8. Hyperspatial - 06:12
All compositions by Dickey / Maneri / Shipp;
© Whit Dickey (BMI)
Recorded (3/18), mixed, and mastered in March 2016
by Jim Clouse at Park West Studios, Brooklyn, NY
Produced by Whit Dickey
Photos & design by Ming@AUM