On their second full-length collaboration as
Turning Jewels Into Water, Val Jeanty and
Ravish Momin continue to utilize cutting-edge technology to construct ever-shifting rhythms drawing from several musical traditions. The album has an overall different sound than their previous work, for several reasons. Instead of improvising together, the record was created remotely, as Jeanty had relocated to Boston to begin a position as a professor at the Berklee College of Music, and quarantine restrictions due to coronavirus would have prevented the two musicians from traveling in order to collaborate anyway. Furthermore, the tracks incorporate contributions from other musicians, including Washington, D.C.-based Iranian singer/daf player
Kamyar Arsani and South African multi-instrumentalist Mpho Molikeng. The result sounds more heavily percussive than Map of Absences, and also a bit more club-centric. While Jeanty's turntablist skills are still on display, they seem less prominent here, and the album moves in a different direction than the illbient abstractions of the duo's first album. Even if it sounds a little bit more on-the-grid, there's still a spontaneous energy to it, particularly on tracks like the playful, scratch-heavy "Kerala in My Heart" or the intricately spinning title track. "Swirl in the Waters" has a tense edge recalling South Africa's gqom scene, but its otherworldly vocals push it into a different realm. Continuing to open their productions to interpretation from other musicians, the duo include remixes by
Laughing Ears, who affixes slamming grime beats to warped vocals, and EMB, who builds polyrhythms out of microscopic clicks and heavy kick drums. ~ Paul Simpson