Slabs & Blooms is as much semiotic experience as listening endeavor, mining the vast reserves of musical magic through un-genre'd harmonic underpinnings. It's total immersion into the heart of creativity, vascular submarine exploration of the highest aesthetic excellence. What extraordinary energy and openness here from my comprehensively inventive colleagues. The sisters Villarreal (Alejandra, Daniela, and Paulina) have a thrilling rock group called The Warning, but this is something from a different side of the cube. Their born musicality shines irrespective of idiom or forum, and here is presented in all its spontaneity and surprise.

One of my objectives this year is to shake up how I relate to musicmaking. Whether through external or interior travel, I want to step outside whatever the bounds of patterns I've established. Something that makes it possible: I'm humbled and delighted to work with people so close to the source of where it all comes from. Any concepts Ale, Dany, & Pau tackled were realized with fluidity and acuity. Ale's bass playing is steady and sure, and coloristically expansive. Dany's guitar playing has nuance, has breadth, has fire, an invigorating combination. And Pau's drumming combines supersolid internalized pulse with a melismatic confidence to transcend mere timekeeping. As singers, their timbres and inner logic create a fascinating quilt, defying expectation but always landing gracefully. And Dany's engineering abilities are innate and expedient.

I can't begin to express my gratitude to all the generous souls who made this recording possible, begun by a dialogue initiated by my good friend Rick Toone and realized through incredible generosity of spirit in the Villarreal family. These Slabs & Blooms flow like sea anenomes in the current, falling; rising; resting; dreaming. I hope you have fun listening to the essence in which it was undertaken: pure joy in communication across time and space. Thanks as always for your kind attention.