For those not in the know, the staggeringly eclectic House of Waters are thrilled to announce the September 8th, 2023, release of their new album, On Becoming, on Snarky Puppy’s GroundUP Music label.

< All About Jazz has hailed the often improvisatory ensemble’s “true eclecticism, drawing [their] influences from many sources”; they called their 2016 self-titled album “a rare and beautiful gem.” Speaking of House of Waters’ 2019 album Rising, Everything is Noise declared, “Music that is as wonderfully engaging and notably unique as this only surfaces once in a long while.”

NPR called the group’s Max ZT, who’s worked with everyone from Victor Wooten to the Goo Goo Dolls, “the Jimi Hendrix of the hammered dulcimer” — he even builds his own instruments. And Onstage Review summed up this iridescent, unclassifiable, globe-spanning project: “House of Waters is a band that is bending the very fabric of the musical universe as we know it.”

How do the group themselves define this new offering? “The concept for the album was tuning the collaboration, focusing on the moment, openness, presentness, composition as a connective tool, composition as an isolating tool,” ZT states. “And the fluidity between the two.”

According to House of Waters’ bassist, Moto Fukushima, they strive for openness married to accessibility. “I want to keep the freedom, But if we keep everything free — like certain kinds of abstract music… it can often be a little too far to communicate between us and the audience. We want to have a certain structure and balance.”

1. Folding Cranes
2. Avaloch
3. 705
4. Hang in the Air
5. Tsumamiori
6. Azures
7. Still
8. The Wall
9. Kabuseori

This adventurously impassioned new recording opens on the veritably crystalline, Asian-hued Folding Cranes and then brings us the quietly emotive Avaloch (named after Avaloch Music Institute, a writer’s retreat in New Hampshire that ZT attended in 2022), the sweetly-hued 705 (whose title reflects the literal time that Fukushima finished the composition, ahead of a 9:00pm gig) and then the thoughtfully stirring Hang in the Air.

Along next is the drum-fed backbone that comes within the playful Tsumamiori (titled after the Japanese word for “rabbit ear folds”), which is itself backed by the rhythmically methodical Azures (itself written some seven years back), the expressive Still (dedicated to ZT’s guru, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, who passed away in 2022), the album rounding out on the upbeat and free-flowing The Wall (which features vocalist Priya Darshini, who is married to ZT), coming to a close on the fluttering, sumptuously improvisational Kabuseori.

Within On Becoming, ZT and Fukushima are joined by first-call accompanists: drummer Antonio Sanchez joins them throughout the album, and guitarist Mike Stern and vocalist Priya Darshini join the innovative duo as special guests.

“My job was to create a space for the band to shine and create without secular concerns,” says producer Guy Eckstine, who has worked with Herbie Hancock, Chris Botti and Wayne Shorter, among others.

Well, listening to the astonishing On Becoming, it’s clear that he — and House of Waters — have utterly fulfilled this mission.

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