Red Moon by Low Leaf

Low Leaf is the long-running and multivalent project of Los Angeleno and multi-instrumentalist Angelica-Marie. Riding the wake of 2023’s Microdose—melding/channeling free jazz, astrology, hip-hop, eco-spirituality, and geo-political anger—Red Moon (out May 24th 2024 on Leaving Records) is a tight, three-song release, a snapshot of Low Leaf during an especially dynamic period.

Having received training in classical piano as a child, Low Leaf is equally adept as a self-taught guitarist, harpist, and producer. Indeed, these four elements (piano, guitar, harp, and beats/sound design)—their balance, fusion, and occasional clashings—constitute the project’s essential ingredients, though notably there is no guitar featured in Red Moon.

Fittingly, Red Moon begins with a live rendition of “Blue Nile,” a song written by fellow polymath, searcher, and harpist, thee late, great Alice Coltrane. In this, the Alice Coltrane bumper sticker revival era, Low Leaf’s “Blue Nile” enfolds the listener like a well-worn, well-loved overcoat of indeterminate origin. How is it that we’ve come to be blessed by this strange and beautiful old thing? Who knows…but it fits perfectly. A recording of a live performance at NeueHouse Hollywood, and with the backing of a drummer, bassist, and flautist, “Blue Nile” is a swirling, ecstatic, intermittently improvisational, and ultimately apt take on a new cosmic standard.

Red Moon’s subsequent two tracks, “Innersound Oddity” and “How to Open a Portal,” are Low Leaf originals, though both possess (no doubt in part to “Blue Nile’s” bold introduction) an uncanny sense of familiarity. And to be sure, there are some familiar components: “Innersound Oddity,” with its tongue-in-cheek intro of “strap in kids” and its propulsive scuzz, is built atop a beat Low Leaf previously contributed to Fat Beats’ Baker’s Dozen series. The track, true to its name, builds towards a frenetic, odd, warbly climax before suddenly dissembling—a B movie UFO flying off its axis. “How to Open a Portal” (which, incidentally, Low Leaf debuted at the long running Leaving Records monthly showcase, Listen to Music Outside in the Daylight Under a Tree) seems to thread the needle between the two previous recordings. Flute and harp dance helical-wise across and over and throughout an airy rhythmic bed. Soothing and vibey, “How to Open a Portal” likewise reserves some daring climactic surprises for the tail end of its ten-minute-plus runtime.

“Every seed I’ve laid has grown into something” says Low Leaf, reflecting upon the breadth of her musical trajectory. The project feels driven by spontaneity, freedom, and intuition. The name itself, Low Leaf, arrived seemingly at random. But the moniker’s multifarious meanings are forever revealing themselves to her—with suggestions of embeddedness, fertility, mortality, and so on. Without succumbing to precious myth-making, it is of note that this is an artist who routinely receives harp lessons via lucid dreams from musicians both real and imagined. Red Moon seems to be a transmission from this very same dream realm.