Available Now:
“Hemlocks, Peacocks” by the Will Mason Quartet

with Anna Webber, deVon Russell Gray, Daniel Fisher-Lochhead
via New Focus Recordings

“An unsettling and revelatory work, a sort of “alternate universe” chamber jazz album.”
— Chris Ingalls, PopMatters

“Driving rhythms are tilted off their axis by the retuned instruments. The results are tense and atmospheric...Mason uses microtonality to bring new colours to jazz’s tonal palette, opening up a world of possibilities.”
—Stewart Smith, The Wire

“The harmonies at the start of “Twilight” reveal another tonal language, dark and enveloping...There’s a restraint at work, a gentleness of timbre, even when the improvisation heats up and a groove starts to kick in, as on “Turned in the Fire.” Mason leads skillfully from the drum kit, his mode of expression rooted in jazz.”
— David Adler, Jazz Times

“The seven-movement composition is a captivating piece of work, by turns hypnotic, explosive, and pensively dirge-like. And as mellow as it may frequently be, the unsettling qualities of its unfamiliar harmonies make it something like the antithesis of “ambient jazz”—not mood music, but something pricklier and more restive, perfectly keyed to a moment where contemplation feels united with the need to gather strength for what’s coming.”
— Philip Sherburne, Futurism Restated

“His own interests veer toward microtonality and free jazz, and everything I’ve heard from has triangulated between those two pursuits and his double-billed cap as composer/drummer...I can’t get enough of the sound and the shifting interplay all across the album, and all four musicians are convincingly locked in and super sharp.”
— Peter Margasak, Nowhere Street

““Draws upon art and poetry for a transportive listening experience.”
— Connie Li, I Care If You Listen