A Willed and Conscious Balance is the first album of material arranged for an ensemble by multi-instrumentalist composer Tomin. The bulk of the album was recorded in one day at The Bunker in Brooklyn, NY by IARC house engineers Dave Vettraino and David Allen, and features a truly incredible lineup that includes members of Irreversible Entanglements and jaimie branch's FLY or DIE. Tomin's wielding of this crack squad is singular though, instantly setting this material apart from the discographies of the contributors.Imagine the density of a J.J. Johnson arrangement rhythmically stretched and pulled à la Thembi-era Pharoah Sanders, or the Dolphy-infused bop squawk elegance of Booker Little's Out Front sent through the sonic washing machine of Bennie Maupin's The Jewel in the Lotus. With each listen, the potential for comparisons feels both endless and unsatisfying, and while there were certainly hints of this direction on Tomin's collection of solo recordings, Flores para Verene / Cantos para Caramina - simple & entrancing chord progressions, favoring the dirge, favoring the repetitive - the sounds heard on A Willed and Conscious Balance take the listener somewhere new. Somewhere fresh yet familiar. A group exploration of simplicity that yields something complicated, just like life itself.
