Music, like love, has the capacity for altering your consciousness, your brain chemistry. These two releases—River of Eden, from Yosef Gutman and Peter Broderick, and The Berklee Sessions, from Scanner and Neil Leonard, each of which got past me in 2024, have the capacity to do just that, and they do it in completely different fashions, acoustically and electronically, respectively.

Yosef Gutman and Peter Broderick
River of Eden (Soul Song Records)
A review
On River of Eden, simplicity yields depth in the hands of Yosef Gutman (compositions, bass) and Peter Broderick (compositions, violin, effects), who are joined by the admirably sympathetic Yonathan Avishai (piano), Itay Sher (guitar), and Yoed Nir (cello). From the opener, “The Open Door,” whose delicate expression welcomes the listener into a spacious oasis of peace, through the closer, “Wave of Forgiveness,” whose ambiance invites openhearted feeling, the album offers an extended instrumental meditation on righteousness. Gutman brings both a jazz and Jewish folk background to the proceedings, and a deep connection to Jewish mystical thought, while Broderick brings an expertise in art rock and sound artistry. Their delicate original melodies, their unpretentious interpretations of nigunim (musical prayers in the Ashkenazi tradition)—note how they allow the nigunim’s tones to speak for themselves—and the quintet’s exquisite sensitivity immerse the listener in a river of contemplative awareness. On my first, quite unfocused listen, I found the music to be lightweight, but on a second, much more attentive listen, I discovered its weightless profundity, its gift of peaceful contemplation and renewal.

Scanner and Neil Leonard
The Berklee Sessions (Alltagsmusik)
A review
When the previously unknown to me Neil Leonard (soprano and alto saxophones, bass clarinet, and live electronics) alerted me to the release of The Berklee Sessions, from himself and Scanner (aka Robert Rimbaud: electronics, shortwave radio, keyboards), I saw that Mike Rivard (bass) and Dean Johnston (drums), members of Club d’Elf (reviewed here, here, here, and here), were among the participants, and I knew I’d be listening. What I got was a complete immersion in an unclassifiable music—not to mention an alternative musical universe operating on unfamiliar but coherent principles and uncommon, to me at any rate, instrumentation. All of it is generated from the fertile imaginations and deft electronic wizardry of Scanner and Leonard, both of whom have long and impressive résumés in sound art installations, live electronics, and more, as well as the tight improvisational work of the entire crew, which also includes David Tronzo (electric slide guitar). Recorded in 2014 and finally mixed, mastered, and released in 2024, the first seven tracks ride the trance rhythm section of Rivard and Johnston, who combine rhythmic elements of funk, rock, jazz, and Gnawan music, touched by electronic effects, over which Scanner, Leonard, and Tronzo paint a multilayered and ever-changing musical canvas of sound. The eighth and final track finds Leonard and electronic musician and sound designer Richard Devine in a dense and mesmeric live version of “Time Code,” the album’s opener. From the sonic massage of “Kerosene Bliss,” with its burbling bass and slowing rising bubbles of sound, to the postapocalyptic lament of “Nothing under the Sun,” with its slowly building sense of dread, and the pop-edged and elegiac “Six Cover Notes” (an immediate counterweight to the postapocalypse), The Berklee Sessions articulately and immersively covers a wide range of feeling. It’s trippy stuff, and I advise you to relax, turn off your mind, and float downstream. . . .

Check out the limited-edition T-shirts and
fridge magnets at the Musically Speaking store.
Your support is much appreciated.

© 2025 Mel Minter