Michael Columbia - Mirrors, Shapes, Objects

We previously worked with drummer & composer Dylan Ryan with two releases by his excellent Sand group and We've long known and admired saxist and composer David McDonnell, who played with Dylan in the excellent, composerly jazz band Herculanium.

Born out of the stylistic free-for-all that was the Chicago independent music scene of the early 2000’s, Michael Columbia has continually experimented with its sound, evolving to meet the creative whims and urges of its practitioners.

Originally formed as a tangent of David McDonnell’s work with the Elephant 6 group Bablicon, Michael Columbia’s records have consistently defied expectations. Their latest offering, Mirrors, Shapes, Objects operates in the overlapping zones shared by free jazz, experimental, and post-rock. The unaffected blend of electro/acoustic textures and ambient swells suggest that the group may have at last arrived at an aesthetic equilibrium.

A multi-instrumentalist trio of veteran genrebenders, David McDonnell, Christopher Kalis, and Dylan Ryan first played together over a decade ago in the Chicago/Philadelphia-based post-rock collective, Icy Demons. Since then they have all consistently moved forward with their own respective musical identities, releasing records and performing with dozens of artists in the free jazz, indie, and electronic scenes in Chicago as well as on both coasts. Those varied experiences only serve to make the Michael Columbia more compelling.

Equally comfortable in an extended instrumental solo as in a committed motorik moment, the group drifts effortlessly between the Soft Machine-style soprano saxophone leads, the interlocking riffs of Discipline-era King Crimson, and the psychedelic-hypno-funk rhythms of Can. Vocals emerge periodically throughout the record, dispelling the notion that these pieces are just vehicles for improvisation and, unlike some of their progressive-rock predecessors, Michael Columbia’s songs rarely exceed five minutes.

As the title suggests, the structures of the pieces are occasionally nonconventional, but as with the Canterbury scene, there dwells within the nimble musicianship clearly defined vocal sections where improvisation takes the back seat to vocals and lyrics. Michael Columbia seems keen to keep the record focused, opting for more songs in the same amount of time and embracing a new-wave/progressive sound, coaxing the listener to ponder what kind of songs Bennie Maupin, Laurie Anderson, and Connie Plank might conjure up for a Michael Mann soundtrack circa 1982.

While the bulk of the tracks on this offering were recorded in December of 2024, a few have been culled from previous, unfinished recording efforts and then re-worked in the studio into a finished form. Michael Columbia is an ongoing creative process and this new release issimply the trio picking up from where they left off more than 10 years ago as they moved on to new cities and lives. The benefit now is the new skill sets, experience and creative insight they each accrued in their individual journeys before coming back together for this recording.