Holland Andrews and Methods Body Cut “Open Water” in One Take at Shahzad Ismaily’s Studio

The track “Open Water” by Holland Andrews and Methods Body came together in a single pass. No overdubs, no second takes. It was a sunny spring afternoon in Brooklyn, and the trio had gathered at Shahzad Ismaily’s Figure 8 studio to celebrate Luke Wyland’s birthday. They set up, pressed record, and pulled a fully formed piece of music out of the air.

What emerged is something nocturnal and remarkably patient. A percussive pattern mimics the sound of dripping water, while Andrews’ processed vocals and Wyland’s electronics stretch the piece somewhere between ambient drift and vocal jazz. John Niekrasz builds a propulsive rhythmic conversation from drums, bell, woodblocks, and a flat-ride cymbal pulled from Ismaily’s collection. The live processing turns each phrase into a looping tapestry, recorded in real time without any post-performance reconstruction.

The track surfaces ahead of REMAIN, the collaborative album the trio will release on June 12 via Whited Sepluchre. Ismaily, who contributed to the record, also shaped the space where this particular session happened. The sound — a late-night, hypnagogic jazzscape — recalls the territory of Love In Exile, the album Ismaily made with Arooj Aftab and Vijay Iyer, and that resonance feels less like an influence than a shared geography.

The trio called “Open Water” “one of our favorite moments on REMAIN” in a statement, describing it as a piece intended to evoke “an otherworldly voyage — one marked by grief, ancestral struggle, and, ultimately, the joy of transformation.”