"NYC keyboardist, singer and composer Judith Berkson has made a bold musical move with her one-woman-band Liederkreis, which is radically different than her two solo albums, Lu-Lu and Oylam, released under her own name.

While Lu-Lu had a relatively conventional voice/keyboard approach in showtune/jazz-standard territory, Oylam (on the noted ECM label) pushed further to include Jewish choral and Yiddish folk music.

Now, with the self-titled debut from Liederkreis, Berkson combines keyboard experimentation, noise, and feedback, and takes inspiration from composer Robert Schumann and German electronic music. The only real constant across these three albums is that each includes a classic Lied-a German song poem-demonstrating Berkson's love for the centuries-old genre.

The album begins with puzzling clip-clop sounds before piercing feedback and severely distorted chords enter the picture, creating an unyieldingly harsh yet compelling piece. "June" pairs vocal outbursts with keyboard zaps, with irregular lengths of silence to create an unusual tension, perhaps evoking some kind of shock-based torture method applied to a small choir.

The slightly sinister "Bela" offers an electric piano riff played over a looped synth abstraction, while the pummeling bizarro-funk of "ISI" uses a stuttering drum kit sample and a single keyboard chord mostly played in unison with the bass drum to give it an extra punch.

Liederkreis translated means "song cycle," and in this case, it refers to Robert Schumann's "Liederkreis, Op. 39" from which the song "Auf einer Burg" ("In a Castle") is taken. The album's most conventional track, it features Berkson singing in German with a solemn beauty accompanied by electric piano, describing an aging knight sitting in solitude, separated from nature and human celebrations.

Liederkreis is a curveball for those who know Berkson's cantorial work or her takes on well-known standards, but for this writer, it's her most intriguing and stimulating album so far with an uncompromising vision"-Ernie Paik, Chattanooga Pulse