Sungazer: Against the Fall of Night

2/13/2025 | Tags: music, review

Let's keep the rhythm up!!! Another 2024 album review, From Me, To You, To Day: a big #9: Sungazer's sophomore album, Against the Fall of Night.

It's difficult to imagine what my music taste would be like today without YouTube. I can't begin to count how many taste-changing releases I've caught in my recommended feed, songs and artists I never would have found otherwise that stick with me today, whether it's TTNG's Animals reaching me at the height of my math rock phase in high school or Anthony Fantano's review of the first glass beach album introducing me to one of the defining sounds of my college years.

In a more direct sense, there's also the artists who came up through YouTube, be it your Vulfpecks or your Louis Coles planting themselves in the collective minds of online musicians one viral hit at a time. One step further removed, you have bands like Sungazer, who inherit their notoriety from the recognizable names behind the project. Regardless of how popular Sungazer is now (something I don't really have a sense for), I would be shocked if more people were familiar with the jazz fusion duo than with its most famous half, bassist Adam Neely. If you watched any YouTube videos about music theory and culture sometime between 2015 and 2020, then you have certainly heard of this man.

Don't get me wrong; particularly after this album cycle, Sungazer's music is strong enough to stand on its own regardless of any Influencer Prestige behind it. But as far as I can tell, I think Adam Neely remains the larger of the two cocentric circles that make up the venn diagram of his and Sungazer's audiences. All of this is to say that if you're the type of person who likes watching YouTube videos about music theory, then Sungazer is likely lazer-targeted for you.

Briefly, if you aren't familiar: Sungazer is a progressive electronic jazz fusion duo consisting of bassist Adam Neely and drummer Shawn Crowder, as well as a rotating cast of studio and touring musicians, their lineup regularly featuring some combination of guitar, keys, and sax. Neely and Crowder both maintain (though less actively in the wake of Sungazer) YouTube channels where they post educational content about various music related topics, such as music perception, extreme rhythms, and analyzing popular music.

The band's songs regularly employ niche rhythmic concepts like odd-tuplets and metric modulation. There's always some sort of rhythmic experimentation going on in Sungazer's work, and as they release more music, their implementation of such experiments in actual songs has become much more natural. While I've enjoyed everything I've heard from them prior to Against the Fall of Night, a lot of it loses its excitement after hearing it once, after watching the accompanying video explaining its tricks, after revisiting it a month or a year down the line and realizing it wasn't as catchy as I had remembered. There's a number of older Sungazer tracks that fail to make much of an impression beyond a first listen.

While the duo released a couple of EPs in 2014 and 2019, their first full-length album, Perihelion, didn't come out until 2021. It suffered from some of the same issues I found in their EPs - songwriting that was occasionally forgettable, aesthetic choices that were occasionally unflattering - but overall felt much stronger. Its opening track and lead single, "Threshold," left a strong impression, existing on the titular impossible threshold between blisteringly fast and meditatively slow. Other memorable tracks like "Macchina" and "Thicc" made me walk away from the album with a lot of positives to say about it, even if half of its track list was far less sticky.

When I heard the two teaser tracks for Against the Fall of Night, while both were fun and exciting, they didn't lead me to believe this new album would be much of an evolution from Perihelion. The title track functions much as "Threshold" did as an opener, another mile-a-minute, double-digit-tuplet groove that renders the comparatively glacial 4/4 backbeat it sits within into a background element. It's a lot of rhythmic athleticism and plate-spinning that coalesces into a piece of electronic jazz fusion that is shockingly listenable and easy to follow, despite the complexity of its parts. "Cool 7" is much the same, albeit much catchier in my opinion; while "Against the Fall of Night"'s leads were ephemeral to the point of feeling incidental - too stretched and washed out to be memorable - the melodies in "Cool 7" feel much more intentional and identifiable. Even if the rhythmic tricks each tune pulls off are equally impressive, the end result is that anytime I try to remember what "Against the Fall of Night" sounds like past the first 30 seconds, my mind just comes up with the horn licks in "Cool 7."

It does go pretty hard, though.

!!! WARNING: NOW ENTERING THE LOATHESOME HATER'S TANGENT ZONE !!!

Regrettably, the name "Cool 7" makes me pause. I'm not sure how I developed this opinion, but something really pisses me off about songs (or works of art in general, but particularly with songs) that name themselves after a central gimmick or feature. For music, I mostly mean when the song is in an odd time signature or something and its name references the time signature. There's nothing wrong with making art for the sake of it, but if you're going to go through the trouble of pointing out the odd meter in your song title, then that meter should at least carry some meaning or thematic weight. Otherwise it feels like an admission that your music doesn't have much of anything to say, especially when the titular feature is just like, a relatively common odd time signature that has been done a million times by now. We're over 60 years out from "Take Five," I think we can do better.

(Editors note: I was going to use "7empest" by Tool as an example here but I didn't feel comfortable making judgments about its thematicism when I am too bored by that entire album to have developed any level of familiarity with the song)

I think there are ways you can do it artfully; "Threshold" doesn't lose any points for me because it can be works both as a reference to the song's central rhythmic concept and as a thematic concept, and it's also not as braindead as just putting the Meter Number in the title. I don't think I would've been nearly as inspired by the song if they named it "Liminal 19."

"Cool 7" violates most of my criteria on this particular issue: it has the number in the song name; the number is one of the most well-explored numbers in the world of odd times; and it does not lend itself particularly well to anything besides a referential interpretation. In its defense, though, the name reads less to me like "the most interesting thing we have to say about this song is that we were so brave to pick the second most normal weird time signature" and more as "we called it Cool 7 as a working title and now we're too endeared to it for any alternative to feel right." I could also be convinced of an ironic intent to it that is cheekily pointing out the exact sort of annoyance that I'm being annoying about. And, like, I'll give it up, as far as 7's go, it is a pretty damn cool one. Far be it from me to say they haven't earned the right to call their 7 cool when the subdivision modulation halfway through the song made me unsure of whether it was even a 7 anymore. 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 3 does equal a cool 7.

!!! NOW EXITING THE LOATHESOME HATER'S TANGENT ZONE !!!

As much as I enjoyed these two tracks, neither felt like a notable departure from Perihelion; maybe the songwriting and production was a bit tighter, but otherwise they were difficult to distinguish from previous Sungazer tunes. But hey, new Sungazer is new Sungazer, I would've been happy to hear Perihelion 2 if that's what we were gonna get.

In October, we did not get Perihelion 2; we got Against the Fall of Night, a collection of tight, memorable fusion excursions that had me listening to it on loop for weeks and humming in my head more than just two or three tracks.

On my first trek through the record, I knew I was in for a special 40 minutes when I heard the opening to the second track. "Whalefall" (two songs with that name in my top 10 albums this year - what does this say about the 2024 vibe?) opens on the tastiest Adam Neely bass lick I've ever heard, a slinking, smirking, sinister groove that oozes atmosphere. The trick of the 15 meter - switching between 5 beats of triplets and 3 beats of pentuplets - is one that longtime Adam Neely watchers are familiar with, and this song puts it to excellent use as it journeys through so many sections that I was shocked to check my phone and see that the runtime wasn't even 6 minutes long. (Like, usually it'd be an insult to call something "the longest 6-minute song I've ever heard," but I mean it as a genuine compliment here.) This metric device is the titular whalefall, summoning and sustaining a diverse ecosystem of deep-sea life, as beautiful as they are alien. That killer opening did not imply a guitar solo as triumphant as the one we get from featured guest Plini, but I sure as hell won't complain about it.

Also in the opening half is the instant classic "Hot Saturn," an uptempo disco beat glittering with chiptune keys by Button Masher and the best goddamn horn licks on the record. This is by far the most addicting song on the album, right out the gate a downhill bike ride under a night sky lit by fireworks. This is another track that goes in an unexpected direction, ending in a high-speed collision course of sixteenth-note syncopation that eventually derails the four-on-the-floor groove. It's admittedly a bit abrupt, but I don't think the Saturn would be as Hot if the track wasn't so brief.

Watching Neely rip this bass part is my Wow! So Satisfying content.

Jumping ahead, the penultimate "Paydushko Horo" channels a similar intensity to mark the album's climax. The pentuplet groove and Tigran Hamasyan-esque breakdown make it much more jagged than "Hot Saturn," though a groove change into a triplet feel leaves it cooling off by the end. This ending makes for a perfect transition into the final track, "Clock of the Long Now," an enigmatic, piano-driven sculpture of Escher-like metric modulations and feel changes. The constant rhythmic switch-ups create a peculiar sense of movement that reminds me of watching early AI-generated animations circa 2021. As is Sungazer's strength, though, this alien motion underpins a tune that is not repulsive but appealing; the piano and strings carve a crystalline harmony, building on top of the undulating rhythm to evoke in my mind an image that is holographic, warping beautifully in the light. "Paydushko Horo" certainly delivers the Bang I crave in an ending, but "Clock of the Long Now" is an excellent and considerate wind-down from the excitement, and a satisfying statement to end the album on.

The track I was most surprised by was "Oeteldonk," which sits (cleverly, as you'll soon see) at the exact midpoint of the record. I did not find it surprising on my first listen; in fact, if you had asked me at the time, I would've told you that it was the most forgettable track on the record, a midtempo jaunt through unassuming sax and bass leads over a cliche synth backdrop. The thing that surprised me was when it was this track that kept getting stuck in my head. More than even the most sugary brain candies of the album, like "Hot Saturn" and "Whalefall," I'd be hearing this song when I went to bed, when I walked to work, when I turned my headphones off after just having listened to the damn thing. It is quite a lovely track that grew on me rather quickly; it has a gentle ebb and flow, and ends in a satisfying hurrah that dissolves the song's rhythmic puzzle.

The rhythmic intrigue in this one is much more subtle than the rest of Against the Fall of Night, which made it all the more fun to discover. "Oeteldonk" opens with a rhythmically ambiguous melody; on its own, it sounds like a straightforward 9/8 or 9/4 line, evenly divided into three groupings of three beats. But when the drums come in, they play a normal 4/4 backbeat that hiccups halfway through, almost like two bars of 4/4 with a single beat standing between the two. This symmetry is reflected (hehe) again later in the tune when we hear a bass melody that is mostly 4/4, but again with a hiccup hiding in it. The difference this time is that the phrase is much longer, and now implies a grouping of 4 + 4 + 1 + 4 + 4, the odd beat flanked by two measures on each side instead of one. I really enjoy this pattern of symmetry, and while I'm not sure I could put a word to it, it certainly adds something to my enjoyment of the song.

A track that never grew on me, though, is the onomatopoeic "Skrontch." It's an unfortunate dead zone between "Whalefall" and "Hot Saturn" that isn't even saved by Mark Lettieri's feature on guitar. I see what they were going for here; there's some rhythmic discombobulation going on between the hugely syncopated groove the track is built on and the metric modulation that rips in halfway through. A less successful piece of the puzzle here is Neely's bass part, which leans heavily on the lowest of low notes on his 5 string. It's really fucking loud and just does not gel with the vibe of the track. I think it's an interesting experiment to write a funk bass line with the pitch preferences of, like, a djent riff, but it doesn't pay off here and hasn't gotten any easier to listen to since I first heard it.

"Skrontch" is about the only real blemish on this record, though. Although my initial appreciation of the lead singles was tepid, I enjoy them more in the context of the full album, which stands as a colorful, well-executed journey of fusion excitement. The writing and production are both noticeably better than they were on the previous Sungazer record, which I still enjoyed plenty. I had lots of fun scratching my head Against the Fall of Night, and look forward to hearing what the stage 2 evolution of Sungazer albums will sound like in however many years from now.

Listen: Bandcamp