BURGER, ROB - The Grid (Sealed) (LP)

Portland-based Rob Burger is an accomplished keyboardist and composer whose storied career comprises film soundtracks and other compositional work, as well as meaningful contributions to the albums of artists such as John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, and Iron & Wine with whom he maintains an ongoing working relationship. Burger rightfully brings his skills and nuanced sensibilities to the fore on The Grid, an LP that recombines neo-classical soundscapes, Harmonia-esque kosmische, and jaunts of 20th-century exotica into a multigenre quilt-work all his own. As a listening experience, the album ranges meanders gracefully between the jovially playful, the contemplative-- and occasionally the menacingly stark-- with masterful ease.