Sometimes Nicole Mitchell and Joe Westerlund finish each other’s sentences. It’s the sort of telepathy that bandmates develop after playing together for a while. Only today during our interview, instead of showing up on the stage, it manifests through words. Mitchell, an internationally acclaimed flutist, composer, and former chair of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), has spent decades expanding the language of improvised music. Westerlund, a percussionist whose background spans experimental rock, jazz, and electroacoustic improvisation, approaches sound with an equally exploratory sensibility. Written in the Universe is the product of such telepathy as well as a resolved duality: imbued with a grounded, natural feeling; paired with an expressive, psychedelic, expansiveness. Echo-imbued, electronics forward and vaguely dreamy, the sound is rooted by a rock-solid polyrhythmic backbone.
It was that connection, honed during myriad live performances around the Durham, North Carolina area, that led them to record together. Recorded over 2 days at Betty's, a rural studio nestled in the woods outside Chapel Hill, the sessions embraced the unpredictability of improvisation. Surrounded by trees and open space, the environment itself seemed to encourage a way of playing that felt instinctive and deeply present.
For Westerlund, spontaneity meant embracing Mitchell's approach to music making. Rather than revising performances into polished compositions, they allowed intuition to dictate the shape of the record. It's less a story of compromise than one of invitation: Mitchell draws Westerlund deeper into a creative philosophy she has spent decades cultivating where improvisation is not simply a technique but a way of listening, responding, and building community.
That commitment to resisting revision gives Written in the Universe its expanding quality. The album exists as a pure document. A record that captures discovery, intuition, and reaction unfolding in real time. The soft patter of rain, the stillness of the surrounding forest, and the open air become an uncredited third player, subtly shaping the musicians' responses as much as the music itself.
On the opening track, Twelve, there's a point where Nicole’s flute, layered with effect, almost feels like after a rainstorm, the clouds crack open and the sun hits you in the face. It’s organic, natural, kind of open to the elements studded with electronics. "I think it's a shared aesthetic," Nicole noted. "Joe is definitely a wizard with the effects on the drums. He was a mentee of Milford Graves, and so he's got that polyrhythmic sensibility, but then bringing in a new voice."
It's an apt observation for an album built less through preconception than attention. Written in the Universe isn't about arriving anywhere. Instead, it invites listeners into the act of listening itself: two musicians responding to one another, and to the world around them, with such attentiveness that spontaneous composition becomes indistinguishable from intuition.
Ayana Contreras, June 2026
