DESCRIPTION:
The music of Ashley Paul almost feels like a deliberate exercise in obfuscation, a wrapping of the self in paradoxes, a music that slowly reveals itself amongst the smoke and mirrors for what it really is. Coming initially from a background of conservatory composition and academe improv, where her classmates included Matana Roberts and where she focused on saxophone (admittedly amongst a great range of instruments she wrestles with), her musical trajectory has lately morphed to where she now leads a trio and plays songs, mostly on guitar. As variants of the Western post-pop song form go, these are still very angular and fragile constructions and, to our ears at least, call to mind Gastr Del Sol perhaps more than anyone else. The New York Times is amongst many perpelexed listeners though: “Ashley Paul, a Brooklyn musician who sometimes sounds influenced by improvisers like Derek Bailey or Keith Rowe, and sometimes sounds as if she’s got nothing to do with any tradition at all — rather, a songwriter with a diaristic, private and flexible sense of what a song is.”