Erie Times-News / goerie.com

sonic openings under pressure: muhheankuntuk

John Chacona
October 26, 2006

sonic openings’ latest recording may not be released yet, but it’s special enough to merit a mention here.

It’s called muhheankuntuck (pronounced ma-HEEN-KUN-tuck), the Lenape name for the Hudson River. patrick brennan told me that it means “River That Flows Two Ways,” and is the source of the Mohegan name given to the Lenape people of the Hudson Valley.
It features brennan, bassist Hill Greene (also Little Jimmy Scott’s music director), and drummer David Pleasant, and it’s an ear-opener.

Thanks to the exceptionally present and clear recording, brennan’s interlocking blocks of rhythm (or is it multiple streams flowing two ways?) appear in great detail.

Pleasant astonishes here, a whirlwind of controlled force. Greene showcases a tone as big and solid as an ancient tree, and brennan brings a speech-like quality to his playing not unlike Ornette Coleman’s. In fact, his approach is a rhythmic analogue of Coleman’s harmolodics, a theory by which melody, harmony, and rhythm carry equal weight. Sometimes, as when brennan adds a simple descending melody to a Pleasant beat, muhheankuntuck achieves this ideal equipoise.

It comes out next year on the Portuguese Clean Feed label. You won’t want to miss it.