In a small room, the sound of tilt rings out like one big voice. Composed of vocalist Isabel Crespo Pardo, vocalist/bassist Carmen Quill, and trombonist/vocalist Kalia Vandever, the Brooklyn-based group writes intricate, viscerally affecting art-pop compositions that blend carefully interwoven motifs with improvisation. Their melodies are chiseled at extremes, vacillating between the angular and the achingly lyrical. All three members are accomplished artists and composers in their own right, coming from strong backgrounds in the jazz world. Their stunning debut LP, something we once knew (out May 3, 2024 on Dear Life Records), is in its own class, stylistically distinct from each player’s solo work—a record that teaches us how to listen to it as it progresses. Recorded live in the studio without overdubs, its songs chart troubled and surreal journeys toward understanding or acceptance, passing through mystical corners of its members’ singular musical vocabularies.

Crespo’s choice embodies the way in which tilt uses its shared, carefully customized musical language to explore deeply internalized sources of confusion and discord. The group searches to find lenses through which to view these deep-seated issues; the idea of actually resolving them usually seems remote, or even beside the point. That larger pursuit feels part of an ongoing, even perpetual process—one that pushes beyond the margins of this gorgeous and uncanny music and carries us past its final notes.