MoonJune 2024
British composer casts a series of magic spells in the company of fellow free thinkers.
The Gathering
Given how busy Mark Wingfield has been in the last decade, it’s difficult to believe a whopping eight years separate "Tales From The Dreaming City" and this platter – only the gap between these two albums is much wider, because such an interval has to be perceived as an expanse of one’s mindset rather than fathomed in calendar units. Picking up in a different place, where the 2017 brace of "The Stone House" and "Lighthouse" left off, “The Gathering” bridges the distance linking the guitarist’s collaborative and solo efforts by focusing on his ability to steer the stellar talent towards tuneful triumphs – a series of peaks as opposed to a single climax – without losing the experimental edge some of the players’ previous joint efforts brought about. But that edge will look blurred here as, together with kindred spirits who assist him in crystallizing quite a few brilliant ideas, the English master’s prepared and improvised pieces blend into a blinding whole.
Of course, with Tony Levin and Percy Jones’ imaginative bass parts flown in – a rare occurrence for the records laid down at La Casa Murada studios the MoonJune label has been haunting for years now – the primary, and often primeval, action is happening, at least in front of the listener’s mental screen, between the core trio of Wingfield and two drummers, Asaf Sirkis and Gary Husband, the former keeping a percussive presence on all the ten tracks and the latter occasionally dropping in while driving the ivories across the board. So yes, there are shadows of "Tor & Vale" which Mark and Gary ruminated on once, yet what then was tentative and took just the two musicians to paint in sound got fleshed out now to feel fierce when the four or five performers apply their brushes to these aural tapestries. Still, impressive as these tapestries seem to appear, it’s melodies that caress the audience’s psyche from the moment the first harmonic passages of opener “The Corkscrew Tower” reveal the intricate details Sirkis’ cymbals and Husband’s piano add to the six-string freedom of thought, to the fluttering finale “Cinnamon Bird” unfolds into.
Here’s why epics don’t belong here: too loose a scope would smear the diaphanous flurries Wingfield’s fingers toss into ether on “Stormlight” to see how the smidges of his sonic sorcery stick to Jones’ elastic lines and how the specks of his magic dust fill “The Lost Room” with chamber beauty before Levin’s supple notes tether the number’s spectral elegy to the ever-shifting groove. However, it’s after “Apparition In The Vaults” and “A Fleeting Glance” marry polyrhythmic dances to a savory mélange of jazzy raves and new-age reveries that the entire space and time of Mark’s current creative intent come to light – or soak in the light the instruments radiate, in particular on the hypnotic “Journey Home” which evokes a railroad trip – to make the sublime, solemn balladry of “Pursued In The Snow Lit Forest” simply breathtaking. And if “The Listening Trees” pulses with subtropical life until soft riffs introduce anxiety to the otherwise serene, albeit constantly changing, landscape, the sparkling “Together We Rise” elevates the album’s titular idea beyond the fusion stratosphere.
Indeed, “The Gathering” may mark Mark Wingfield’s artistic apex – but it’s easy to assume his ascent is far from being over.
*****
