Jason Moran / BlankFor.ms / Marcus Gilmore - Shards

Pianist Jason Moran, sound sculpture BlankFor.Ms, and drummer Marcus Gilmore reunite for their second album of boundary pushing live and electronically processed music with 2026's Shards. The follow-up to 2023's Refract, the album once again finds the trio crafting textural soundscapes that straddle the line between modal post-bop and spacey experimental electronic music. 

While blending jazz improvisation with electronic production is by no means a novel idea, with a tradition going at least as far back as Miles Davis' 1969 album In a Silent Way, Moran and company bring a live, in-the-moment approach to their work that stands out. Rather than reworking Moran and Gilmore's playing in post-production, Tyler Gilmore (aka BlankFor.Ms) instead captures and processes samples of their work in real time, immediately incorporating them back into the performance. 

The opening "Shard I" starts like a hard-swinging free jazz number from the '60s that grows ever more diffuse and ripped apart as it moves toward the outro. Conversely, "Shard II" sounds like a deconstructed rhumba half-remembered from a dream. Equally textural moments pop up, as in the droid-jazz of "Tape Loop a Echo," the spectral impressionist balladry of "And the Pieces Are Falling," and the metallic Krautrock funk of "Barbershop." Like the broken mirror concept implied in its title, Shards often feels like a sonic reflection of Moran, Gilmore and BlankFor.Ms' playing; one that loops against itself in ever more fractured, dreamlike ways. AllMusicGuide