by Dean Wolfe (Prog dog Media) Album released April 10, 2026.
I didn't know what to expect, but I ended up really loving this album.
Sumptuous Branching is an invigorating, challenging listen—decidedly not background music and not for the faint of heart. It demands attention, rewarding even as it unsettles, like a disturbance that stirs a riverbed and leaves the water cleaner.
Soloist Emily Rach Beisel is a Chicago-based improviser, composer, educator, curator, and woodwind specialist. She performs all music on this album, with bass clarinet, vocals, piccolo, and electronics. Listening to her work can feel like an alien abduction: everything familiar falls away, replaced by a world you didn’t know existed. She has said she was inspired by late medieval chant, drawn to its wild freedom and rich density. Whatever the artist’s statement might suggest, my first instinct is to set that aside and respond directly to what I’m hearing.
As a fan of first-contact movies like Arrival, I can’t help but think much of the album would be perfectly suited as a film score covering that same strange territory. “To Rise in Arms,” a standout track, captures this tension perfectly—at once jarringly beautiful, but also eerie and otherworldly.
'Her Still Singing Limbs' evokes strong imagery in my mind, reminding me of the classic early 70's TV show Kung Fu about a peaceful Shaolin monk who travels the desert expanse of the American Old West, using martial arts and wisdom to avoid violence while helping others and searching for his lost half-brother.
Fragments of the familiar do surface on this album, especially on the title track, thoughtfully chosen to close the album with, offering a kind of quiet reassurance. A simple, lonesome clarinet begins with a single breath, before three or four voices gradually join in, answering it in kind—loneliness still present, but shared, and in that sharing, softened. It restores a distinctly human touch within a broader soundscape of electronically scrambled and manipulated textures.
[The album was recorded at Marmalade in Chicago by Bill Harris, mixed by Harris and Beisel, mastered by Edward Hamel. This is her second album released through Chicago’s avant/exploratory label Amalgam. She is wrapping up a mid-west tour right now.]
https://www.emilybeisel.comhttps://emilyrachbeisel.bandcamp.comhttps://www.instagram.com/beisel_m_https://www.amalgamusic.orghttps://www.instagram.com/amalgam_chicagohttps://www.facebook.com/amalgamusicFOR FANS OF:
Sunn O))), Om, Zu, Faust, Amon Düül, Colin Stetson, Nala Sinephro, John Zorn, Oren Ambarchi
GENRES:
Drone, Avant Jazz, Experimental, Ambient
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