Syrinx Effect
A Sky You Could Strike a Match On
Self-released
Syrinx Effect is a Seattle-based duo that utilizes looping, distortion pedals, and electronics to create sonic landscapes of sound. Solos are beautifully played by soprano saxophonist Kate Olson and trombonist Naomi Moon Siegel. The duo evolved from the renowned Racer Sessions, a weekly improv jam session in Seattle.
Through their first two recordings, and by live performances including the 2017 Earshot Jazz Festival, Syrinx Effect has been somewhat cast as an avant-garde affair. On A Sky You Could Strike a Match On, the duo offers folk melodies, baroque-like interludes, a New Orleans romp, and a haunting melody so dense it evokes visual imagery.
Olson’s “The Bank Robber Song” is a tempo-changing New Orleans romp, bouncing between a second-line march, a mounting ambient frenzy, and a dense, lazy stretch of the blues. The solos are jubilant, tapping deeply into the jazz roots of both musicians. Drummer Eric Eagle enters the fray, while both Olson and Siegel play acoustically, without electronic assistance. There is an organic, free-flowing resonance about the piece that is joyful and playful, the acoustic approach allowing more rhythmic elasticity.
Siegel’s “Redwood Cry” expresses the natural echoplex of sound that is a forest of tall trees, the multiplicity of ambient sounds bouncing between giant redwoods, captured within an aerodynamic canopy. Siegel’s use of pedals is dynamic, creating a broad switchback for melodic improvisation.
Both Olson and Siegel solo with ardent tonality, and expansive imagination. The varied landscape of sound they create to serve harmonically facilitates the considerable talents of both soloists to draw from roots in classical and jazz forms, from their fascination with simpler folk melodies, and the ultimate tie-in to an abstract view of the blues.
–Paul Rauch
