It’s not until about halfway through Cloudward (Nonesuch), the second album by her band Amaryllis, that Mary Halvorson unleashes the gnarly, distorted potential lying in her signature array of pedals and DL4 Delay Modeler. Until “Desiderata,” the guitarist-composer has played a subtler, more enmeshed role amid this exhilarating lineup featuring trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, trombonist Jacob Garchik and vibraphonist Patricia Brennan. Jazz-pixie elder Laurie Anderson and her modified violin drop by for the languidly astral “Incarnadine,” and Cloudward finally drifts away with the gospel-tinged elation of “Ultramarine.”