Sarah Belle Reid & Vinny Golia : Accidental Ornithology
A summit of two of the deepest and most exploratory minds in the experimental music landscape teams elder statesman royalty with a young upstart resulting in an experience that gushes exuberance at every twist and turn. Vinny Golia is a multi-instrumental maestro who for decades has been a leading light of avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical, having collaborated with such titans as Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, Weasel Walter, Patrick Shiroishi, Henry Kaiser and Anthony Braxton. Approaching 80, Golia is a true “out” head. Also a Los Angeles staple, Sarah Belle Reid is a trumpeter on the rise, as well as a composer and electronics noisemaker with a blossoming output as a bandleader and collaborator whose CV is dotted with improvised music and chamber-pop alliances such as with Julia Holter.
Together, Reid and Golia make for sublime creative partners who, although having never joined forces before, speak in a singular cosmic vocabulary. The cloak-and-dagger-type dynamic the two share is crystallized through the conceptual theme of Accidental Ornithology: the calls and behaviors of fictitious birds. Theirs is a mystical form of communication that captures those imaginary sounds on the fourteen rainbow-streaked improvisations that comprise the record.
With Golia wielding an array of instruments including piccolo, quarter tone contrabass flute, alto clarinet, A clarinet E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet and gongs and Reid on B-flat trumpet, quarter tone flugelhorn, MaxMSP programmer and modular synthesizer, one would expect an intricately woven maelstrom of tones, textures, timbre and patterns. It’s a head-spinning experience, as each freewheeling piece attests. But while the ever-mutating electroacoustic soundscapes that Reid and Golia sculpt may exude a unique type of precision, at the same time they suggest a lighthearted touch, are playfully eccentric and, like a bird, they swoop, dart, dance and scamper across with abandon.
Accidental Ornithology instantly takes flight with a hectic and hyper immediacy that yields disorienting feels all around—in a good way. On every piece—each one named for make-believe birds hatched from the wild-eyed imaginations of Reid and Golia—there’s a call-and-response approach the duo employs where constellations of sounds relentlessly ping-pong every which way, thus shattering the dizzy scale. Undoubtedly, they put their stockpile of instruments to good use with a sweeping effect that’s mind-bending, making it difficult to grasp that only two musicians are unleashing such a torrent.
Not only is the interplay on another level of telepathy but the remarkable thing about Accidental Ornithology is its whimsical underpinnings. Fluttering experiments like the electronics-splattered “Yellow Speckled Pond Grouse” and “Pixie Goose” may cause whiplash with all of its busy starts and stops but there’s a feathery goodness that is at its heart. The freakish circus-like atmosphere is full-blown on the breakneck conversational hornplay of “Red Crested Floobog” and “The Royal Graffler”; the noisy vistas of “Autumn Bog Fowl” and “Queen Waterfleck” is like Wolf Eyes jamming with Jimmy Giuffre. Whoever thought to devise this first-time meeting deserves props because Accidental Ornithology is a thrill a minute, rife with unpredictable moments and a special synergy palpable from the proverbial get-go.
Label: Infrequent Seams
Year: 2025
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