John McCowen feat. Lucy Railton & Weston Olencki - Pressure Chords (2026)

Iceland-based American woodwind ace John McCowen links up with Lucy Railton and Weston Olencki in Berlin on 'Pressure Chords', who paint over his multiphonic contrabass clarinet tonalities with xenharmonic cello and trombone shades.

McCowen was recently spotted with Swedish-Finnish sound artist Marja Ahti, sprucing up the excellent 'Errands' for Oren Ambarchi's Black Truffle imprint. And the composer-performer turns his attention to Swiss label Hallow Ground here, working with Railton and Olencki to transform his intense solo performance into the roar of a trio. He first worked with the two Berlin-based artists when they performed together at the German capital's neue musik nexus KM28 and realized they had exactly the experience and skill he had been looking for to extend his compositions. So in 2023, they met again at Rabih Beaini's Morphine Raum to debut 'Pressure Chords', recording the studio version of the piece a year later alongside engineer Adam Asnan.

McCowen's uncommon extended technique exercises take center stage; after years of practice, he's able to make the contrabass clarinet, usually a monophonic instrument, belt out multiple pitches at the same time. So extending his tones over two long sides, he leans into the alluring peculiarity of xenharmonic tuning by exploring intervals that are just as rare as the technique itself. Railton's a dab hand at this approach by now and adds restrained (but as always, very impressive) accents, allowing her cello to almost vanish into the woodwind. Olencki's thick brass tones are harder to submerge, but give the composition the extra weight it needs - and Olencki also adds subtle field recordings that fill 'Pressure Chords' out even further.