Magic Heart by Playfield: Carter, Muhr, Ishito, Plaks, Namenwirth, Takahashi, Swanson, Panikkar

Playfield, the experimental jazz collective guided by Daniel Carter, offers a second studio album, Magic Heart. As a multi-instrumentalist, Carter has always sought to contextualize sound, relying on outdoor performance and New York City’s auditory ambience, to orchestrate his sound. This practice, which is fundamentally improvisational and experimental, opens any final recording to the unpredictable nature of strangers’ sound and offers a rich texture to depict a moment in time, drawing on the world itself: conversations, car horns, bird songs, and far away, even other music. This is the group’s first recording in a studio and it’s made of two volumes: Stepping Out (released by 577 Records in 2022) and this second volume: Magic Heart. Here Daniel Carter together with Luisa Muhr (Voice), Ayumi Ishito (Tenor Sax and Electronics), Eric Plaks (Piano and Rhodes), Aron Namenwirth (Guitar and Electronics), Yutaka Takahashi (Guitar and Electronics), Zachary Swanson (Bass), Jon Panikkar (Drums) gathered inside to make something less ambient. As the environment transitioned from open streets to an enclosed room, the artists brought in field recordings of cicadas or ice-cream trucks, and heavy new effects to transition during interludes. Producers Jon Rosenberg and Aron Namenwirth borrowed mixing techniques from the pop and cinema world. Magic Heart will be available on CD in January 2024.

One of the legendary masters of creative music. Daniel Carter has recorded or performed with William Parker, Federico Ughi, DJ Logic, Thurston Moore, Yo La Tengo, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Sonic Youth, Sam Rivers, Yoko Ono, Living Colour, Medesky Martin and Wood and Jaco Pastorius among others. He is a member of the cooperative free jazz groups TEST and Other Dimensions In Music.

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