Good fences might make good neighbors, as the old saying goes, but would a silk fence make a good fence? Though delightful to the touch, the luxurious fabric doesn’t exactly present a formidable barrier. Silk Fence, a new band of familiar players in the more esoteric corners of the underground jam world—bassist Justin Frye (PC Worship), drummer Booker Stardrum (SML, Play Time), and guitarist Arian Shafee (Guerilla Toss)—don’t appear to believe in strong boundaries, either. On their self-titled debut, the New York-based trio deal in porous instrumentals that blur the lines between improvisatory rock, minimalist jazz, and maximalist ambient, just to name a few modes happening here. 

A warning: Those looking for the groovy sass of Guerilla Toss, probably the most well-known and certainly the most pop-adjacent part of the Silk Fence pedigree, will come up empty. Shafee operates in a languid, free-form zone throughout, trading his funky licks for loose, spacious lines and tolling, repetitive chords. The rhythm section likewise tends toward the unvarying, setting a pulse or pattern and sticking with it for long stretches. Despite this informal, jam-forward approach, however, Silk Fence appear to be chasing something; an understated but steady coherence gives direction to even their most wandering moments.

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Frye’s upright bass usually acts as the motor, setting the tempo and tone. Album opener “(A)RT” begins with clouds of sustained tremolo drifting over a propulsive bass riff and Stardrum’s brisk ride-cymbal work, and doesn’t change much over the course of its 10 minutes. Shafee shifts to languid picked notes, a whispering rattle grows more prominent, the bass drops out for a bit in the middle and things get floaty, but such developments arise in an incremental fashion. When the familiar bass line resumes after its break, Stardrum adds some punchy snare accents to the shimmering beat, and Shafee’s eddying notes grow more prominent in the mix, but this slight increase in tension feels like a brief confluence of details more than an intentional burst of energy. Still, there are hints of purpose in such transitory alignments, a sense of intuitive forces at work. Rustling and droning tape effects from Frye, subtle enough to be nearly subliminal but still somehow palpably present, act as a binding agent on every track, blurring tones and connecting rhythms.

The two shorter tracks on the album, “HD” and “FAMBI,” have more compact heft. “FAMBI” revolves around meditative plucked bass offset by slurred rhythms and bright pincushion guitar. “HD,” probably the most conventionally “rockin'” song on the album, contrasts a close-set, gnarled-raga guitar line against bouncing-trampoline bass and a clicking, snare rim-heavy shuffle. On both tracks, Silk Fence summon a flow state using different means: through a slow, billowing invocation on “FAMBI” and trancelike mesmerism on “HD.” Neither song leads to a big payoff or even a definite destination, and 14-minute closing track “Statue of Liberty,” which essentially consists of a series of minute variations on a single guitar chord, a shamanic percussive pulse, and bowed bass, does away with momentum entirely. Silk Fence may not know exactly where they’re going, but they’re not going to let any barriers get in their way.

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