TOPOGRAPHIES OF THE DARK

Release date: January 2008

Recorded in Santa Fe, New Mexico on the occasion of Accra Trane Station’s first visit from Ghana to the U.S., Topographies of the Dark is a musical exploration in dialogue with sculptural paintings made in Accra by visual artist Virginia Ryan. Her textured assemblages in overlaying densities of black are featured in the accompanying booklet.

Ryan’s Topographies of the Dark paintings are created from recycled flip-flops that washed up on Accra’s beaches. Like the water rolling in and out along the Black Atlantic coast, these once-worn shoes embody histories of movement and passage, crossings close and far. The Topographies of the Dark CD similarly tells tales of musical crossings that connect Africa, Europe, and America in the diasporic grooves of jazz improvisation.

Accra Trane Station is Nii Noi Nortey and Nii Otoo Annan. Nortey is inventor of the afrifones, African winds with saxophone mouthpieces, and Annan plays the APK, or African percussion kit, a battery of African bells and drums together with jazz cymbals. Since 2005 Nortey and Annan have been working with musician and anthropologist Steven Feld. As a trio they have recorded two previous Voxlox Cds, the 2006 Meditations for John Coltrane, a tribute to the 40th anniversary of Coltrane’s Meditations, and 2007 Another Blue Train, marking the 50th anniversary of Ghana’s independence and Coltrane’s Blue Train.

When Accra Trane Station came to his home in New Mexico in August 2007, Feld proposed a recording collaboration with two of his oldest musical associates, Alex Coke and Jefferson Voorhees. Topographies of the Dark is the quintet record of this conversation.

Sax and flute improviser Alex Coke, based in Austin and Amsterdam, has performed and recorded with the Willem Breuker Kollektief, Worthy Constituents, and Creative Opportunity Orchestra. He and Feld previously played together in Leadbelly Legacy Band and Live Action Brass Band. In 2005 VoxLox released his CD Iraqnophobia/Wake Up Dead Man.

Drummer Jefferson Voorhees studied West African percussion with C.K. Ladzekpo and became a mainstay in the bay area World Beat movement, playing with numerous African and Afro-Caribbean bands. He and Feld previously worked together in the Tom Guralnick Trio, Bonefied, and Out of Context.