Album Review: Volume Three

Jazz and modular synthesis are not genres often grouped together or fused, but Darren Pickering Small Worlds expertly combines the two genres in their newly released album Volume Three. Following their previous works Volume One (2022) and Volume Two (2023), Volume Three explores the combination of the two unique genres through immersive, weaving melodies, overtop modern jazz structures and instrumentation. Jazz, traditionally rooted in band instruments like drums, horns, and guitars, directly opposes modular synthesis, a genre born entirely from technology. Where to make music you control voltage levels to adjust parameters of digital sound. 

Being a jazz pianist, composer, educator, session musician, and modular synthesist, it is no surprise that it is Darren Pickering to take two genres at either end of the musical spectrum and join them together in such a grounding way. While the compositions are of Darren Pickering’s own, the group Darren Pickering Small Worlds is made up, of course, of Darren Pickering on piano, but also with Jono Blackie on drums, Pete Fleming on bass, and Heather Webb on guitar. The quartet regularly performs Pickering’s compositions, often through-composed, with the entire band improvising over their grounding jazz base. Many of the pieces in the album are through-composed, shifting through melodies and time seamlessly, and it becomes clear here, how the genres of jazz and modular synthesis align so well. In Volume Three particularly, the modular synthesis enhances the texture of each piece, providing a cinematic enhancement to the modern jazz band, sustaining unexpected interest in the texture, panning, and timbre of the entire work.

The first and only single in the lead up to this album is Green Blinking Light, an intricate piece that balances drones, repetitive melodies, with jazz changes. Tension builds deliciously with a single pitch repeated, as the chords change, and synths pan, until that telltale scale melody is played again.

My personal favourite from the album is Soft Life. A perfect mix of ambient modular synthesis and through composed jazz, it starts off modular synthesis focused but leans into the soft expanse of unusual but smooth chord changes. This entire album is an incredible experience. The band is locked in with each other and collaborate together to create pieces that feel so incredibly familiar, but truly original and unique.

It is the final piece on the album, Push Bliss, a jazz piano and synthesis piece that closes out the album. The melody is lyrical, the synths are inviting, and it feels like the comfort of going back to listen again, one more time.