Slowly Melting is the third cello album of American, Washington D.C.-based cellist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Janel Leppin, featuring her on the effects-laden cello, and playing on guitar, bass, piano and Prophet-5 synth. This album suggests the centuries-old cello as a futurist instrument, expanded, layered, and manipulated through analog technology.
Leppin calls this album «a love letter» to the fuzzbox, and this compact analog effects device allows her to go down into an unpredictable and surprising sonic rabbit holes. Four pieces reference directly distinct fuzzboxes – «Zonk», «Dizzy» «Mk1», and «Germanium”» All nine pieces balance between crystalline, lyrical melodies and atmospheric experimental edge, which adds a dramatic, distorted, and noisy touch to the cello’s refined, acoustic sound. «The Brink Is Home», a touching piece Leppin performed as her nightly closer when she opened for the West African guitarist Mdou Moctar, and «Kaffa House», an unaccompanied, fuzz-free solo piece that pays homage to the now-defunct D.C. venue where Leppin checked out punk and hardcore shows in high school, best capture Leppin’s unique, timeless musical vision.
Pluto in Aquarius is the third album of Leppin’s r Ensemble Volcano Ash, the quinet the features Leppin’s partner, guitarist Anthony Pirog (of the Messthetics, who also plays with Leppin in a duo), tenor sax player Brian Settles, bassist Luke Stewart, and drummer Larry Ferguson. Leppin composed the music for this album in the months before and after the 2024 presidential election, reflecting disorienting feelings of hopelessness and tension in concise, raw, and skronky free-jazz language, again with the effects-laden cello. The album’s title signifies a momentous astrological transition, believed to bring radical change by reshaping power dynamics, technology, and inequality.
Still, the album clebrates rselove and optimistic struggle – a «Hope Marathon», as one of the pieces is titled, and the artists who have lived such fight, with pieces like the uplifting, post-punk, «Jazz Is Resistance», the noisy, nervous attack on ICE, «Cruel Motherfuckers», and «Deerhoof Is God», which employs a killer riff that evokes the art-punk band. The most moving piece, «Susan Was a Warrior», is dedicated to the late, pedal-steel visionary Susan Alcorn, Leppin’s dear friend, mentor, and collaborator. Leppin arranged Alcorn’s music for The Heart Sutra (Ideologic Organ, 2020).
Leppin concludes that the album’s motivating message: «This is where we listen to each other. This is where we start forgiving each other because we need each other. This is where we remember our humanity».
Eyal Hareuveni
Jamel Leppin (cello, guitar, bass, Prophet-Five, piano, CP-70), Larry Ferguson (drums), Anthony Pirog (guitar), Brian Settles (tenor saxophone), Luke Stewart (bass)
