Planetarium in Bloomington, MN

Guitarist and composer
Ben Monder
began recording as a bandleader with 1996's
Flux
. Since, he's led a dozen albums featuring duos, trios, and quartets, and has become a member of
the Bad Plus
. He's amassed more than 200 credits as a co-leader and sideman with
David Bowie
,
Maria Schneider
Guillermo Klein
Paul Motian
, and
Donny McCaslin
, to name a few.
Monder
's three-disc
Planetarium
took a decade to write, arrange, and record, beginning as a single album concept in 2014 and gradually evolving into its present form. Composing began slowly; as ideas emerged,
sketched and recorded demos. In December 2020, the guitarist and his longtime engineer and producer
Joseph Branciforte
holed up in a Mount Vernon, New York studio. They spent three years recording with alternating casts of singers and players who include
Chris Tordini
, drummers
Ted Poor
and
Satoshi Takeishi
, and vocalists
Theo Bleckmann
Charlotte Mundy
Emily Hurst
Theo Sable
.
Each disc commences with sprawling works. On disc one, it's "Ouroboros II" and "The Mentaculus." The first is introduced by overdubbed fingerpicked guitars playing circular, intersecting patterns, with hushed cymbals and tom-toms that gradually intensify into free-form drift under a wordless vocal chorus. Over 20 minutes long, "The Mentaculus" is a trio instrumental that amounts to a harmonic labyrinth, articulated through structured improvisation, jazz-rock, and classical dynamics as layered tones, notes, and phrases emerge and disappear like landscapes through a train window. Disc closer "Planetarium" is a languid, dreamy solo guitar ballad with simple fingerpicked patterns framed by expansive chord voicings.
All four selections on disc two are long. Opener "Globestructures: Option II" is a solo guitar meditation based on
Kazuo Ishiguro
's emotionally taut novel The Unconsoled. It floats with elliptical phrasing, guitar harmonics, and pedals. The commissioned 23-minute "Ataraxia" combines electric and acoustic guitars in multivalent layered, slightly dissonant patterns, atop
Tordini
Branciforte
's drums.
Bleckmann
's overdubbed choral vocals are in constant wordless dialogue with the guitarist; the tune recalls the
Pat Metheny Group
of
Offramp
Travels
.
"3PSC" kicks off disc three. Over 21 minutes, it's an intimate solo for electric guitar.
's playing mastery is total in building chord shapes that underscore ghostly trace melodies and lead fills. "Ouroboros I" is a ten-minute, occasionally dissonant, rumbling trio instrumental that combines 21st century jazz lyricism, experimental indie rock, and dark, moody atmospherics. "Noctivagant" is a moody acoustic guitar composition that combines folk, hymnody, and space to deliver something transcendent. "Collinsport" spends most of its 14 minutes as a solo instrumental for electric guitar with a rounded, elegant tone despite the tension in the changes. Halfway through,
Mundy
begin harmonizing wordlessly, adding a more ethereal sonic palette that
responds to with intention and intricate detail. The album closes with a brief cover of "Wayfaring Stranger" with
playing baritone to his mother's ghostly singing; she perfectly inhabits the desolate lyric. In sum,
is the guitarist's most ambitious, complex offering. That said, it is attractively accessible, poignant, and resonant in execution. ~ Thom Jurek