Spectreview: Benny Bock – Vanishing Act

The debut record from Los Angeles keyboardist Benny Bock is a dense architecture built from myriad electronic instruments and a jazz foundation.

Released: June 3, 2022

Electronic
(Jazz)
(Ambient)

-CHARTREUSE-

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Vanishing Act, the debut record from keyboardist Benny Bock, floats in an overcast cloud blanketing the bright sharp edges of L.A. architecture. Jazz forms the base, but elements of electronic and ambient seep in like an ersatz merging of Burial and Brad Mehldau. It’s hard to pinpoint how these elements merge on a moment-to-moment basis, and ultimately it matters less than the glacial gorgeousness with which the LP flows.

Colorfield Records, who were also responsible for releasing Alabaster dePlume’s marvelous Go Forward In The Courage of Your Love earlier this year, plays almost as much a part in the record’s form as Bock and his collaborators. The label’s studio head, Pete Min, orders his artists not to bring prepared material into the recording sessions, thus encouraging improvisation and blocking off comfort zones. It led Bock to write on a plethora of tools: grand pianos, synth keyboards, Mellotrons, whatever falls under the umbrella of “key-based instrument.”

The Steinway is what you hear first, on “Erwin’s Garden,” the album’s red herring of an opener. It’s there to provide the record’s jazz context but it might be one of the most arresting pieces on the LP. Daphne Chen’s strings mix with Bock’s piano in a moving tribute to Erwin Helfer that chills the air. Nothing afterward approaches jazz from such a classic stance; the following number, “Dynamo,” also features Chen’s strings but burbles with electronic flourishes and a skittering drum machine, pattering like rain in a sidewalk puddle.

Though the record is tied to Los Angeles, a focus on ponderous minor chords and a generally dour atmosphere helps tie it to the perpetually sodden streets of London, and especially Thom Yorke’s solo work. A rounded bass on the exquisitely moody “Vanishing Act” plays beautifully against two sets of chiming, liquid keys. “Ten Thousand Fragments” strolls pensively, its time signature changes almost imperceptible amid soft percussion and a muted guitar line that plonks gently like a sōzu. “Eight Below Zero” strolls with a sighing mournfulness, as if Boards of Canada featured a slide guitar player, while “Windmills’” rates around a descending arpeggio as the percussion seems to switch every few seconds. Rain seeps in all the while.

Like a lot of ambient-based music, Vanishing Act doesn’t require close listening, but it benefits greatly from it. Though it plays more like a collection of ambient electronic pieces than what its opener may suggest, the nuance of jazz still reigns. The devil here is in the details, which are likely to be overlooked as the record moves into its back half and loses a little momentum, right around the hymnal synths of “Solid Air.” What strikes me the most is the organic unpredictability of these songs: how they shift across time, how they rarely end the same way they start. In a sense it’s a very specific kind of ambient, one that changes the air around you without you even noticing, even as it loops right back around.

Recommended for endless showers.