Review Summary: Dan Briggs, Chris Allison, and Emily Hopkins team up to give you the ultimate ( ( ( h a r p p r o g ) ) ) experience.
Do you know the Muffin Man? How about Harp Lady, the internet's busiest harpist and effect pedal aficionado? Emily Hopkins (aka Harp Lady aka emilyharpist aka emilyharpist2) has teamed up for a surprise collaborative EP with Chris Allison, most notably recognized for his work with jazz-fusion outfit Plini, and Dan Briggs, the low-end groove technician of Between the Buried and Me fame. Together, this harp, bass, and drum trio offers up a fresh and ethereal take on instrumental progressive-ambient-harp-jazz... metal? Yeah.
Obverse certainly does not aim to overwhelm with distortion or speed. In fact, I often found myself pining for a bit more growl in Briggs' bass tone, but the rhythms in which Obverse (the entity) create still exhibit a knotty sense of technicality that seems obvious considering two-thirds of the members' progressive metal backgrounds. Fingers are swift and precise; time signatures tend to leave you holding on a second longer than you expect, but it's all so chillllll. Playful really is the key word here. Briggs' and Allison's rhythm work is astute in its virtuosity, no doubt, but they are here first and foremost to set the stage and provoke reactions from Hopkins' electric harp, and they don't make it easy for her. Briggs and Allison collapse entire suns for Hopkins to dance around like a butterfly with wings made of cosmos. She does so with grace and fluidity.
Hopkins' harp is a technicolor joy that takes on many forms throughout these four movements while always remaining distinctly harplike. Of course, such a wide array of frequencies combined with the ability to run specific note ranges through separate effect chains would create such a diverse and shimmering show of lights, and this is where Hopkins' extensive pedal collection absolutely comes in clutch. The tones on this EP are just dripping in boutique reverbs, fluttering echos, and sunburst fuzz. Special shout-out to those ASMR popping sounds near the middle of "Obverse II” that sound like the rippled implosions of tiny stars; you'll know when you hear them. Hopkins' harp lays atop the rhythm like a living, breathing organism, exhaling atoms into the breeze, and Briggs, who sounds equally opportunistic in his shapeshifting, must have also shared in the plunder of Hopkins' pedal stash. Allison's drumming speaks for itself, of course; his dance is intricate and plays a vital role in linking the pieces of Obverse together, but sometimes a perfectly timed and warbled string pluck over a cymbal hit does give the impression of mutual metamorphosis.
Obverse does have a large improvisational component to it, but you would hardly know it. These four songs are set up with a series of well-defined crux points to give them each a sense of shape and direction, some of which are just too dang clever and smooth to not be planned. Like the many catch-and-release moments where the trio gets hung up and flung in unison, coalescing into an organic mass of noise and refracted light before a sudden rhythm shift sends them skittering back to their respective corners of the galaxy. Chris Allison, Dan Briggs, and Emily Hopkins have created a wonderful proof of concept here that shows just how well they can play off of each other, and I sincerely hope they don't stop here. There is so much more that could be done with this formula.