Recording and composition
Following Moore's relatively straightforward rock album Rock n Roll Consciousness (2017), Spirit Counsel in part contains rock music elements but often has more in common with Moore's avant-garde output that he had historically released on small independent labels. The album consists of three long instrumental compositions that pay homage to figures who had influenced him throughout his life, [1] and altogether, they make for a total runtime of roughly two and a half hours. [2]
Opener "Alice Moki Jayne" was recorded in 2019 at Les Ateliers Claus, Brussels [3] and was named after Alice Coltrane, Moki Cherry, and Jayne Cortez. [4] An hour-long track, it is one of the album's more rock-oriented compositions, and it features regular collaborators Debbie Googe on bass and James Sedwards on guitar, and is augmented by Jon Leidecker on electronics, Jen Chochinov on guitar, and Jem Doulton on drums. [1]
The second, "8 Spring Street", is a solo guitar composition [4] that pays tribute to Moore's former mentor Glenn Branca. The title is in reference to a Manhattan apartment where Branca once lived in the 1980s. [2] Recorded in 2019 at Wiltoy Way, London, at 29 minutes long, it is the album's shortest track. [3]
The final piece on Spirit Counsel, "Galaxies", is a nearly hour-long recording of a performance at the Barbican Theatre in London where Moore and eleven other musicians played together on 12-string electric guitars. [1] The event, which took place on April 14, 2018, had been billed as "Galaxies: 12x12" and included Moore, Googe, Sedwards, and Chochinov, in addition to Alex Ward, David Toop, Eugene Coyne, James McCartney, Jonah Falco, Joseph Coward, Rachel Aggs, and Susan Stenger. Prior to the performance, Moore had met everyone except Chochinov and Coyne. He attributed inspiration for the event on the Sun Ra poem "The Satellites Are Spinning". [5]
Critical reception
According to the review aggregator Metacritic , Spirit Counsel received "generally favorable reviews" based on a weighted average score of 71 out of 100 from seven critic scores. [8]
In a 7.8 out of 10 review for Pitchfork , Stuart Berman believed that Spirit Counsel provided listeners "arguably the most accessible entry point into Moore's boundless experimental canon", singling out "Alice Moki Jayne" as a track that both "rewards your patience handsomely" and "showcases his band at strength". [1] AllMusic's Fred Thomas gave a slightly more mixed assessment of the record; while they called it "an ambitious but focused masterwork of Moore's expansive and specific approach to experimental instrumental music", they said it was "Still locked in the trappings and instrumentation of indie rock". [2]
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