The Cleaver/Lopez duo pass on their vast, cultural experience through a collection of considered interactions that are always meditative, but never pondering.
Positive Elevation/577 Records
Gerald Cleaver (drums); Brandon Lopez (bass); Hpiozm (electronics, deconstruction and rebuild)
Recorded at Forward Festival 2019, at the ShapeShifter Lab, Brooklyn, New York
The music in the wilderness is, to say the least, otherworldly or spiritual maybe, starry? The soundscape opens with a touchy-feely consistency that has the bass and drums layering each other in sheets like the contours of a relief map. This chart encourages the musicians and their audience to meander into the unfamiliar and the unobtrusive musical instrumentation argues that it is perfectly safe to do so.
Each musician is clearly contributing to every part of the whole project from improvisations to off-hand compositions which mindset yields a positively free air in which to perform. The original recording from Cleaver and Lopez at the Forward Festival was subsequently restructured by HPRIZM, a hip-hop producer from the Antipop Consortium. He is also known as music producer, High Priest.
His compositions have been exposed at many venues in the USA, Italy and elsewhere and he has worked or collaborated with many forward moving artists including Matthew Shipp, Meredith Monk, Radiohead and the late rapper, MFDoom.
Detroit’s rich, musical heritage includes drummer Gerald Cleaver, whose original inspiration was his father, drummer John. Cleaver studied for his B.A. in music education at the University of Michigan. During his studies he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship, to study with drummer Victor Lewis. Later he joined the jazz faculty at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University.
Among others, Gerald has worked with many, notable musicians including Muhal Richard Abrams, Tommy Flanagan, Charles Gayle, Hank Jones, Roscoe Mitchell, William Parker, Mario Pavone, Matthew Shipp, Craig Taborn, Henry Threadgill, Miroslav Vitous and Reggie Workman.
Brandon Lopez is a composer and bassist working from New York, at the peripheries of free improv, jazz, new music and noise. He has worked with many bright stars from among the constellations of free improv, modern jazz , classical music and poetry. His associates include Sun Ra Arkestra, Ingrid Laubrock, Cecilia Lopez, Fred Moten, Chris Potter, Tyshawn Sorey and John Zorn.
The Cleaver/Lopez duo pass on their vast, cultural experience through a collection of considered interactions that are always meditative, but never pondering.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
