ABOUT

To listen to Invocation, the debut duo EP of vocalist Vuyo Sotashe and pianist Chris Pattishall, is to be held by a practice of radical empathy, built upon over a decade of deep friendship and consistent collaboration. Distinguished by the duo’s penchant for disarming vulnerability and patience, this is a recorded testimony of time told slowly, tracing the gnarled roots of ancestral knowledge into a forest in full bloom.

“We find we’re at our best when we haven’t predetermined how a song will go,” Pattishall observes. “Embracing the unknown together requires us to listen with our full attention and care, placing us in a shared space of interdependence.”

That beguiling calm in the face of great uncertainty has grown from seeds planted long ago. Having created together for many years in various configurations and international tours, Sotashe and Pattishall started regularly performing as a duo in 2020. Following a residency at renowned venue Joe’s Pub as New York Voices artists, the duo went into the studio to document their developing approach. Restrained, focused, and leaning into quiet ambiguity, the music evolves slowly, a hushed invocation of community in the midst of turbulent times. 

Invocation was co-produced by Rafiq Bhatia (Oscar-nominated composer and member of Son Lux) and Eric Oberstein (GRAMMY-winning producer). Bhatia, who mixed the album, brings a surreal intimacy to the proceedings, highlighting the interweaving of Sotashe’s breath and Pattishall’s fingers flitting over the piano keys. 

Across the EP’s four tracks, Sotashe and Pattishall pull and push, like seasoned dancers taking turns to lead, enhanced by subtle sound design that constantly shifts the listeners’ frame of reference. The EP’s opening track I’ll Look Around comes into focus over the course of a minute, with Pattishall’s hazy piano and Sotashe’s plaintive voice dancing in circles around each other. Time expands and contracts as the duo navigates the song’s emotional ambiguity. Inspired by recordings of Nina Simone, the performance prioritizes a raw immediacy over displays of virtuosity. “Nina’s version of this song feels like how an auntie, an elder, a matriarch would archive the volatility and perserverence we experience” Vuyo notes. “It’s like Nina is saying ‘I’ll tell you the truth now, so you don’t get it twisted when it comes.’”

Their rendition of the Duke Ellington staple I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good) is drenched in blues pathos, but as the song progresses, hints of a fever dream begin to leak through the seams. When Sotashe sings the phrase “when the weekend’s over” a world emerges teeming with possibility and regret in an expanded sonic register. 

A take on the early Randy Newman composition I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today is a case study in the duo’s embrace of vulnerability both sonically and thematically — you can hear the tension between cynicism and idealism the lyrics describe in their undulating delivery. In the last refrain, clouds of sound design and piano darken and gain weight before unleashing torrents of rain. In the aftermath of the deluge, Sotashe repeats the phrase “human kindness” — the words shifting between question, affirmation, and imploration.

The EP closes with Sylvia, a love letter to a departing matriarch from her beloved community. Having first heard his mother singing the Xhosa song in the kitchen as a child, Vuyo reflects: “We often find that African stories are located in finding oneself amongst nature or community, within a matrix of interdependence. In the case of Sylvia, the text begins with a mourning, a communal cry, but the verses end with the line ‘Kambe sitsho sithi – Ndlela Ntle’ which essentially is a sending off in goodness. There’s a crossover of grief and love — a holding of the dual emotions — which is also found in the essence and ancientness of the blues.” The composition was originally written for a choir, and communal singing was a major part of Vuyo’s formative musical experiences. “I think it’s a very special act to engage in singing, which is something our ancestors knew as it’s one of the oldest ways of recording history. There’s something specific about South African choral music that beautifully integrated indigenous knowledge and stories with this consonant harmony and complex counterpoint, sung by 60-piece choirs.” 

Vuyo and Chris’ rendition of Sylvia reframes that South African choral tradition, rendering it in a prismatic mutation. Sotashe’s vocal performance is transfigured by layers of synthesizer, pitch-shifting software, and bouncing the audio to analog tape. The result is a surreal Afrofuturist dreamscape where Vuyo’s voice blooms into a full choir or fragments into variegated hues reminiscent of early James Blake or Zapp and Roger.

Invocation follows on the release of Easy (Fight To Forget) from the Son Lux rework album Alternate Forms (released August 2023) and They Say I Look Like God (released October 2023).

About the Artists:

Since moving to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar, Vuyo Sotashe has performed with celebrated jazz legends including Wynton Marsalis, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Jimmy Heath, George Benson, Al Jarreau, Barry Harris, and Winard Harper. He has appeared at Montreux Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Cape Town International Jazz Festival, Newport Jazz Fest, Joy of Jazz, and Arcevia Jazz Festival. Described as "a bright tenor that can easily spring from sonorous depths to the full-bodied top of his impressive range" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Vuyo made his off-Broadway debut in The Public Theater's production of Black Light. 

Chris Pattishall has established himself as "an expert at using the jazz tradition as a jumping off-point for experimentation" (JazzTimes) and his debut album Zodiac was called "a startling achievement" (NY Times) and “a hell of a debut album” (Stereogum). He is a featured performer on a wide range of recordings, from the GRAMMY-nominated debut album of Jamison Ross to the film scores of Knives Out, Nightmare Alley, and the Academy Award-winning Best Picture Everything Everywhere All At Once. He co-composed the score to the Emmy-winning documentary Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project with Samora Pinderhughes.