In 2018, New York pianist Cory Smythe released Circulate Susanna, his first album for Kris Davis’ Pyroclastic label, using piano, electronics, detuned guitar, and voice to present a heavily deconstructed take on the Americana he heard as a kid in rural Illinois. On the follow-up, Accelerate Every Voice, he expands from three musicians to six, all vocalists except himself, to explore another facet of American song in his highly unorthodox way. Part of the inspiration is a cappella music in its many iterations across the color line. The title obliquely refers to Andrew Hill’s 1970 Blue Note album Lift Every Voice and its hypnotic use of group vocals in a modern jazz context (James Weldon Johnson’s immortal “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is relevant as well). Smythe modifies his piano in inscrutable ways to generate a peculiar microtonal vocabulary, while Steven Hrycelak sings vocal bass and Kari Francis adds vocal percussion in a manner very much akin to beatboxing. Against that rhythmic and timbral foundation, singers Kyoko Kitamura, Michael Mayo, and Raquel Acevedo Klein interact through wordless syllables, extended techniques, and improvised flights, conjuring a many-layered world of sonic and expressive mystery.