Cole Pulice

So many great records have been landing from Cole Police lately. After two collaborations already on the decks this year — To Live & Die in Space & Time with Lynn Avery and Strawberry Roan with Nat Harvie — Cole is back solo, but no less potent. With nods to Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne, Harold Budd and Jon Hassell, Cole’s latest is an electroacoustic tumble through introspection and meditation. Pulice’s sax lines have a comforting, flannel delivery to them that’s always entrancing. While there is a fluid veracity to their works, it’s hard not to hear Cole’s lines and feel the sound fluffing at the edges like a warm blanket, filling in the spaces in the soul where comfort is craved. The record dives into inner tessellations and kaleidoscopic whirlpools that pull the listener down through shell after shell and layer after layer until the outside world seems far from view. While Lou Turner may have spoken of Microcosmos this year, Pulice may have succeeded in creating one.

Where the past collaborations were mostly stark affairs playing with a sense of moment in unadorned space, the backdrops here add a splash of pigment to Cole’s world with piano loops, brittle percussion, and synth foam added to the mix. This all comes to a head on the title track, “Scry,” closing out the album with a hypnotic pulse. While it is billed as solo, a few friends do drop in to color the corners of the new record. Lynn Avery returns for a bit of help processing forms and some clarinet, Charlie Bruber adds bass, Lou Harrison brings Gamelan and Mitch Stahlmann also brings in some clarinet for the closer to trade phrases with Avery. It’s hard to parse Cole’s three records as they all feel like different angles on the same ache within 2022. I look forward to each new perspective that they offer up and the small moments that are opened wider with their help.

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