Miguel Kertsman’s Paradoxes is a sonic meditation on contradiction, an exploration of how opposites coexist, how dissonance can hold beauty, and how harmony is often born not from agreement but from tension. The Brazilian-American composer, known for effortlessly crossing borders between symphonic, jazz, and electronic realms, returns here to his early love of progressive rock. But Paradoxes is more than a nostalgic return. It’s a philosophical inquiry disguised as an album, one that asks what it means to be human in an age of noise, division, and digital timekeeping.
Right from the start of “Enclosed Pathways,” the listener enters a terrain of transformation. Synths hum like distant machinery before the piece bursts into a rhythmic dialogue of motion and reflection. There’s a sense of wandering through a labyrinth built not of walls but of emotions: corridors of curiosity, corners of hesitation, open spaces of release. The composition’s shifting intensity mirrors the experience of circling through one’s own inner paradoxes: how one moment feels expansive, the next constricted; how tension and calm coexist in the same breath.
The following “Piano Postlude: Letting Go” arrives as a gentle contradiction: all acoustic warmth after the analog vastness that preceded it. Its harmonies are elegant, jazz-tinged, and quietly searching. Kertsman’s phrasing lingers on dissonances before resolving them, as though illustrating the process of acceptance itself. The track’s title is apt: letting go is not a gesture of abandonment but of grace, a small release that allows something deeper to breathe.
“Still Currents” continues the journey inward. The music is charged with rhythmic propulsion, driven by pulsing synths and precise drumming. Yet as it unfolds, its energy softens into dreamlike spaciousness. The paradox here lies in perception: movement so steady it begins to feel like stillness. Kertsman captures that fragile equilibrium between drive and serenity, suggesting that motion and calm are not opposites but interdependent states of being.
When “Red Blue Sky” enters, the album’s conceptual heart begins to take lyrical form. Sung by Drew Sarich, the piece contemplates a world obsessed with binary thinking: “black or white,” “red or blue,” and our collective loss of nuance. The melody is reflective and unhurried, suspended between melancholy and hope. Kertsman’s words feel less like a critique and more like an invitation, a plea for dialogue in an age of echo chambers. The refrain, “Come across and talk to us / We’ll go there and talk to you,” rings as both a moral and musical motif: communication as the antidote to collapse.
“Jubilant Anxiety” lives up to its name, playing joy and tension against one another with exhilarating precision. Bright piano figures flutter above percussive undercurrents, the interplay creating a texture that feels both restless and ecstatic. Kertsman understands that anxiety and vitality often stem from the same source, the pulse of being alive. His music refuses to choose between the two, preferring to let them coexist in vibrant unease.
“Fanfare in Quietude” takes this interplay further. Its opening bursts with theatrical color: crashes, flourishes, and rhythmic bravado, before dissolving into a refined piano section, almost classical in restraint. The contrast between exuberance and introspection feels ritualistic, as though celebration and contemplation were two parts of the same ceremony. When the organ enters near the end, the music acquires a sacred tone, transforming playfulness into devotion.
The atmosphere shifts again with “Liquid Fire,” the album’s most visceral track. It channels ecological anxiety into sonic drama. Sarich’s urgent vocals cut through with lines like “When fire rages high / Will we let it fry?” The piece feels apocalyptic yet strangely compassionate, a warning issued not in anger but in grief. Here, Kertsman reminds us that our planet’s fragility is mirrored by our own.
“Atemporal Ocean” offers a moment of reprieve. Sung in both English and Portuguese by Saiphe, it unfolds like a hymn to surrender: soft, aquatic, and weightless. The bilingual lyrics mirror the fluidity of the sea itself, crossing linguistic boundaries the way waves cross shores. Kertsman’s piano shimmers under the vocals, blending romantic nostalgia with a sense of cosmic calm. The piece’s companion, “Postlude: Waterverse,” continues this atmosphere through impressionistic gestures and subtle dissonances that ebb like thought dissolving into meditation. The faint sound of waves at its end closes the scene, not with finality, but with continuation, the sea’s eternal refrain.
“Then Is Now” bridges eras and aesthetics with seamless grace. The track opens with echoes of Pink Floyd: wide, echoing guitars and analog warmth, but soon expands into something uniquely Kertsman. Synths bloom, drums pulse, and time seems to bend. The piece suggests that past and present are merely two sides of the same coin, a paradox of time itself. “Postlude: Nostalgic Future” develops that thought further, its piano evoking memory while its synth textures hum with anticipation. The sound of the future, Kertsman seems to suggest, is already tinged with longing.
In “i-Clock,” he turns from the cosmic to the satirical, using ticking rhythms and quick tempos to mimic the modern world’s obsession with productivity and digital time. The humor is light but cutting, we measure seconds only to lose sight of eternity. Its counterpart, “Postlude: De-clocking,” reverses this logic. Here, the piano and bass stretch time open, allowing breath and resonance to replace the mechanical pulse. It’s music liberated from the tyranny of measurement, an invitation to simply exist.
Across Paradoxes, Kertsman crafts a rare equilibrium between intellect and intuition. His analog instruments hum with human imperfection; his harmonies invite questions rather than closure. The production: warm, dynamic,unhurried, sometimes even rigid and overdriven preserves the immediacy of live performance while maintaining conceptual clarity.
Ultimately, Paradoxes isn’t an album that seeks to explain contradiction, it reconciles it. It treats opposites as companions, not adversaries. In its world, noise gives birth to quiet, reason yields to wonder, and time bends toward reflection. Kertsman doesn’t resolve the conflicts he evokes; he lets them breathe together until they sound almost like truth. In that space between what is and what could be, Paradoxes finds its deepest harmony: one where listening itself becomes an act of understanding.
