Tomin’s second album of 2024, “A Willed and Conscious Balance,” builds upon the strengths he showed off in his debut, “Flores para Verene/Cantos para Caramina.” The earlier album is a delicate, concentrated set that features beautiful solo woodwind covers of influential songs and a handful of thoughtful, melancholic originals, sketched out on synths. “A Willed and Conscious Balance” gives Tomin a chance to flex his skills as a composer and bandleader—this album has a couple re-recordings of the originals on “Flores para Verene…” and two covers that further demonstrate his talent for interpretation.
It's impressive to see how Tomin transforms tunes like “Life,” “Love,” and “Life Revisited” from the first album—where they existed as charming, affecting studies on the synth—to big, vivid jams here. The earlier version of “Love” is a humming drone and fluttering notes on the synth, two minutes and change; now changed into a flume of beautiful noise: horns, strings, woodwinds, swelling and receding over the course of five minutes. Both “Life” and “Life Revisted” receive similar metamorphorsis—“Life” in particular becomes one of the best and most fascinating jams on the album, with some incredible Rhodes (I think) playing from Teiana Davis. This expansion in execution, scope, ambition, etc., reminds me a little of the transition from, say, Grizzly Bear’s “Horn of Plenty,” which was just Ed Droste, to “Yellow House.” Very different artists, but a similar kind of leap. The quality of the songs was apparent on “Flores para Verene/Cantos para Caramina,” but “A Willed and Conscious Balance” seems more like the fulfillment of a vision.
The brand new tunes here—“Untitled Dirge” and its intro, “4alto (interlude)” and “4alto Revisited (interlude),” and “movement”—slot right in next to the songs from Tomin’s debut and the two covers he and the band include at the end of the album. “Untitled Dirge” and the intro kick off the album and give a sense of what Tomin and the band are capable of. It starts with a big statement from the horns and percussion, one taking the lead then the other, and then the strings, cellos from Clérida Etimé and Lester St. Louis, take the focus. Bass follows, then flute. A dirge where it feels like the whole band shares the burden of grief. The flow from “Untitled Dirge (intro)” into “Untitled Dirge” is so good too, where the former is a minute of horns and drone, and then bursts into the whole band arrangement right at the turn of the track.
“movement” is one of the groovier songs on the album; it feels very much like the type of song that would emerge organically from an hours-long jam. It starts with bass and drums, Rhodes (maybe), trumpet, cello, then flute, all running together. I listened to this song for the first time during a long walk, and it has such a perfect loping rhythm to it—though it feels less like a stroll and more like a confident (not cocky) strut along crowded city sidewalks, dodging other pedestrians, dipping into the street momentarily to avoid an obstacle.
Tomin and the band close out “A Willed and Conscious Balance” with two covers: “Man of Words,” by Booker Little, and “Humility in the Light of the Creator,” by Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre. The band plays these both in interesting ways—stretching out and slowing down “Man of Words” a little, and then adding some turbulence and static to “Humility in the Light of the Creator.” Like on “Flores para Verene…” Tomin shows off his talent for interpretation and arrangement here, both paying homage to and recreating these songs that he loves.