CD Review: Miles Okazaki - Miniature America

Miles Okazaki

Miniature America

(Cygnus) cygnusrecordings.bandcamp.com

"In the context of the road trip, it seems that Miniature America could be a roadside attraction, just beyond that hill in the distance. It's announced on a billboard that promises something you've never seen before, a one-of-a-kind curiosity." 

These words come from Miles Okazaki's liner notes to his newest album, a thought that adds a cinematic element to the 22 tracks. If the music herein was a roadside attraction, the experience might play tricks on the mind, blurring the line between reality and bleary-eyed hallucinations that come after long hours on the interstate. The brief tracks (11 of them don't even last two minutes) exit as quickly as they enter, making them feel like fleeting dreams, or something seen from the corner of the eye.

Okazaki has assembled a group of seven musicians and three vocalists to help create this exquisite work. The instrumentation includes no bass, drums or any type of percussion. Along with Okazaki's guitars come three saxophones (Caroline Davis, Anna Webber, Jon Irabagon), trombone (Jacob Garchik), vibraphone (Patricia Brennan) and piano (Matt Mitchell). The voices of Fay Victor, Jen Shyu and Ganavya do everything from create angelic choirs to repeat selected lines of poetry or excerpted phrases from Immanuel Kant. The latter occurs in "The Cocktail Party" which evokes its name as Mitchell plays the album's languid theme while disembodied voices chatter in the background. Or maybe the foreground.

The brevity of the pieces works in their favor since they provide passing glimpses into varied and detailed scenes. "Chutes and Ladders" presents 61 seconds of group improv, most of it bathed in reverb. In "Deep River" Victor savors one line of poetry while Okazaki flows around her. The combination of guitar, vibes and piano in "Follow That Car" has a fine layer of distortion floating on top of it, which isn't easy to detect at first. 

When things go on longer, the album feels like a suite that's reaching a finale. "In The Fullness of Time" lasts over six minutes, as Ganavya takes liberties with the melody that first entered in "The Cocktail Party" while Irabagon plays wildly off in the distance. A few tracks earlier, all three of the vocalists turned that same melody into a hymn in "The Firmament."

Throughout the album, Okazaki acts more like a bandleader committed to the sound of the group rather than acting as a major soloist, though his rapid picking does get ample room in tracks like "The Funicular" and "Zodiacal Sign." Along with his standard electric and acoustic guitars, he utilizes a quarter-tone and fretless guitars to toy with the sound through channel-crossing slides and plinks.

When the album concludes, the voices of everyone involved repeat more final lines of poems, and what could be unsettling actually comes off sounding warm and a tad humorous. And it feels like the parting words of those unusual roadside folks - who might not be there if you turn around to look back at them.