Robert C. Ford and Sound Liberation, Footprints of Steel

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Robert C. Ford and Sound Liberation, Footprints of Steel (Composers Concordance Records, 2025)

Album review by John Pietaro


The poet Robert C. Ford stands as a perennial voice within the canon of new music composer-guitarist Gene Pritsker’s Sound Liberation ensemble and Composers Concordance organization, traversing international tours within the fold along with numerous NYC venues. This newly released album on the Composers Concordance label exemplifies the range of their work together in many genres and features not only Pritsker’s compositions and searing guitar lines, but a variety of vocalists and instrumentalists, plus the music of guest composers Adam Holzman, Carli Munoz, Brian DuFord/Milica Paranosic, and Jay Rodriguez-Sierra. The outstanding bios of the composers notwithstanding, the attention here remains on the poetry of Ford, recited or sung. Best said, each of the cutting-edge musicians heard on Footprints of Steel have not simply respect for the lyrical content but they’ve clearly perfected the art of song. Of course, knowing the manifold reach of Composers Concordance, the concept of song is but an entropy, as diverse as new music itself.


Opening track “Puzzle Complete” is flavored like an homage to early King Crimson sprinkled with Deep Purple, particularly within the unison runs and Pritsker’s barking, biting chromatic guitar lines. The haunting vocal of Stefanie Egger, electronically enhanced, encompasses the airspace under which electric bassist Mat Fieldes and drummer Simon Springer quake. This is a throttling of the best possible type. In contrast is “Ascending Volumes” which features Ford’s spoken word performance and the shakuhachi of celebrated saxophonist/reeds player Jay Rodriguez-Sierra. The poetry of past literary and political moments—no, movements--is artfully spotlighted. “If I ran the zoo/Fitzgerald whispers”; such couplets far transcend date.  Yet a more traditional art song, a lied in every way save for the use of English language, can be heard in “The Difference Unhappiness”, cast by the beautiful, soaring vocal of Adriana Valdes, Lynn Bechtold’s charming violin and Pritsker’s pianistic acoustic guitar parts. Melody, harmony and poetry are enjoined in a classic manner.


What exactly is “new music” these days and how much further can it strive beyond the high Downtown years? One answer may lie within the album’s fourth selection, “Not All Apples Are Blue Color”, which embraces the wonderfully bizarre. No, this cut is not of the Dada school, it isn’t No Wave, nor post-punk, but of a late-1960s fashion recalling Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable and an acoustic Velvet Underground, wherein the poet’s recitation and droning vocal are interspersed with Milica Paranosic’s mellifluous singing and piercing spoken word, anchored by Brian DuFord’s classical guitar. Here, women’s liberation tangos with the truly absurd, in a manner demanding repeated listenings. But this goes for much of this album. “9-Months Earlier” bring back Stefanie Egger’s urgent lead vocal, shared here with that of Bezran Onen, along with layers of Pritsker’s electric guitaring and the pulsating rhythm section of Jose Moura (bass) and Russell Holzman (drums).


Over the course of Footprints of Steel’s 14 cuts, the listener is taken on a hypnotic ride, perhaps on the back of a speeding motorcycle, sans helmet, in a late-night chase from northernmost Broadway through crowded Times Square. Yet, also captured here are the spare, almost pastoral moments bearing updated urgency: a live rendition of “Suicide Barbie” with the poet’s recitation, Pritsker’s electric guitar and Franz Hackl’s gorgeous, sonorous trumpet, and “Blissful Surrender”’s overdubbed choir created by duo vocalists Vanessa Rincon and Daniel Cubillan; the ringing 5ths and near-angelic cadences will bleed into the rest of your day. This is heard too in the sadly ironic “Gross Domestic Happiness” within Ford’s terse reading and the powerful, searching music of pianist Carli Munoz, post-modernism embodied. This quality is also found in “May the Great Ark Save the Drones” which marries the operatic voices of Julia Amisano and Charles Coleman within a swinging arrangement executed by Jay Rodriguez-Sierra’s alto saxophone, Greg Baker’s electric guitar, Jose Moura’s electric bass, and Cesare Papetti’s drumset. And the album closer, a live recording of “Dream Big” by keyboardist Adam Holzman (a Miles Davis alumnus) along with the drums of Dave Cossin and Pritsker’s guitar. Rhythmic, almost mellow jazz fusion drools over this cut, which seems to encapsulate the diverse sounds preceding it. In the recitation, Ford, “the Wall St. Poet”, reminds us that art is the subject of dreams and becoming. A quotient of the Fibonacci Sequence? That, eventually, may be what it’s all about.


CREDITS:

[1] Puzzle Complete (Ford/Pritsker)

Stefanie Egger - voice

Gene Pritsker - electric guitar

Mat Fieldes - bass guitar

Simon Springer - drums

[2] Ascending Volumes (Ford/Rodriguez-Sierra)

Robert C. Ford - narrator

Jay Rodriguez-Sierra - shakuhachi

[3] The Difference Unhappiness (Ford/Pritsker)

Adriana Valdés - soprano

Lynn Bechtold - violin

Gene Pritsker - guitar

[4] Not All Apples Are Blue Color (Ford/DuFord/ Paranosic)

Milica Paranosic - voice/acoustic guitar/electronics

Brian DuFord - acoustic guitar

Robert C. Ford - narrator

[5] 9-Months Earlier (Ford/Pritsker)

Stefanie Egger - voice

Berzan Önen - voice

Gene Pritsker - guitars

Jose Moura - bass

Russell Holzman - drums

[6] Suicide Barbie - live (Ford/Pritsker)

Robert C. Ford - narrator

Franz Hackl - trumpet

Gene Pritsker - guitar

[7] Why Didn't You Tag Me?  (Ford/Pritsker)

Robert C. Ford - narrator

Gene Pritsker - electronics

[8] Blissful Surrender (Ford/Pritsker)

Vanessa Rincon - voice

Daniel Cubillan - voice

[9] Footprints of Steel - live (Ford/Pritsker)

Robert C. Ford - narrator

Gene Pritsker - Di J

[10] Gross Domestic Happiness GDH (Munoz)

Robert C. Ford - narrator

Carli Muñoz - piano

[11] The Color of the Number 3 (Ford/Pritsker)

Robert C. Ford - narrator

Lish Lindsey - flute

Eddy Malave - viola

Mara Navas - cello

[12] The Day Saturn Lost Its Rings (Ford/Pritsker)

Robert C. Ford - narrator

Geoffrey Burleson - 4 pianos

 [13] May the Great Ark Save the Drones - live (Ford/Pritsker)

Julia Amisano - voice

Charles Coleman - voice

Jay Rodriguez - saxophone

Greg Baker - guitar

Jose Moura - bass

Cesare Papetti - drums

[14] Dream Big (Ford/Holzman)

Robert C. Ford - narrator

Adam Holzman - keyboards/Moog bass

Gene Pritsker - guitar

David Cossin - drums


 


 

 

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