Artist: Ambrose Akinmusire & Mary Halvorson
Album: Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings
Genre: Avant-Garde Jazz, Contemporary Jazz
Label: Nonesuch
Released: 2026
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
01. Prelude in the Ash (6:04)
02. This Vivid (4:47)
03. Nice to Meet You Again for the First Time (5:50)
04. Soundcheck (3:32)
05. Watersmoke (3:19)
06. Tangled Pretty (4:25)
07. Ofo (4:13)
08. Blood & Sand (6:18)
09. Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings (7:48)
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Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings, the Nonesuch duo debut by guitarist Mary Halvorson and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, was a long time coming. The pair have played together informally since 2009. They tried recording together twice unsuccessfully. In January 2025 they got together to rehearse for a duo performance at New York venue The Stone, and booked Sear Sound studio the day after for recording. The nine track Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings includes four original compositions by each musician and one co-written piece. Both players were celebrated for 2025 albums: the guitarist's About Ghosts was selected as the year's best jazz album by several sources including NPR, the Twentieth Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll, and Eighteenth International Critics Poll. Akinmusire's honey from a winter stone was celebrated as one of 2025's best albums by Jazzwise, Mojo, Record Collector, and the Wire. On this album the music was created by determinedly balancing individual technical virtuosity with intuition and space. Their conversational interaction reflects a joint commitment to deep listening and adventurousness. A unique feature of the proceeding is Akinmusire's use of a Line 6 DL4 MKII delay effects pedal for the first time; Halvorson had presented it to him five minutes before rehearsal.
Opener "Prelude in the Ash" is a ballad introduced unaccompanied by the trumpeter. Its halting single notes and limpid cadence provide the guitarist with enough lyric richness to establish a poignant, circular, fingerpicked series of harmonic changes as Akinmusire moves across the horn's registers, evoking blues and Catalonian folk music. Halvorson changes shapes, tempos, and keys as extended notes are bended before the duo joins during the final moments. Following track "This Vivid" shatters the peace. It literally arrives with a digitally delayed trumpet and flanged chord voicings before a literal scream emerges that is later accompanied by grunts and more screams in different pitches that loop back on themselves as the duo offer abstract conversation between them. First single "Soundcheck" arrives with Akinmusire's cascading mid-register lines solo before employing the delay pedal, adding layers of hypnotic single tones. Halvorson responds with washed chords and wry humor, sculpting a responsorial with slippery arpeggios and shapes creating an environment for Akinmusire's multiple tones to inhabit and move around in. The first moments of "Tangled Pretty" find Akinmusire in minor-key ballad mode. Halvorson adds breathing rounded chord shapes then circular fingerpicked changes as the trumpeter asserts an intimate lyric that moves off into improvisation. Halvorson introduces "Blood and Sand" with a bright yet balladic statement that proves fertile for Akinmusire. They follow its dictates into episodically rich terrain across rockist chords, pop lyricism, and jazz impressionism. The closing title track is the set's longest. Its multivalent textures and pillowy dimensions add a truly cinematic feel as it flows, drifts, cascades, and caresses the proceeding into silence. Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings delivers musical adventure with unshakeable confidence and poetically unhurried harmonic invention. The offering provides nothing short of aesthetic intimacy and revelation.
Review by Thom Jurek