The layers of sound don’t just wash over you, they seep into your pores, lower the pulse and transport you to far-away places
Brownswood Recordings: BWOOD0445CD Gary Bartz (alto & soprano saxophone); Jake Long (drums); Ali MacSween (piano, synths & Modular FX); Axel Kaner-Lidström (trumpet); Twm Dylan (double bass); Tim Doyle (percussion); Chelsea Carmichael (tenor saxophone)
Recorded at Lightship 95 Studio, London on 3-7 June 2023
New musical collaborations can often surprise. They come with the hope and expectation that together new partners will spark ideas to create work that is fresh and exciting. And so it turns out with this album, which delivers on all fronts. Here, new London-based ensemble Your Brother’s Keeper has joined forces with the saxophone giant Gary Bartz, whose career has included collaborations with Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner and Miles Davis.
But this collaboration isn’t entirely new. Assembled from the London jazz scene by drummer/producer Jake Long, Your Brother’s Keeper brings together a number of artists who had previously worked with Bartz in his collaboration with the group Maisha on the excellent Night Dreamer Direct-To-Disc Sessions (2020). Jake Long, Al MacSween, Axel Kaner-Lidström, Twm Dylan and Tim Doyle all appeared on that recording, with Chelsea Carmichael’s tenor sax now added to the line up. And running through it all is the guiding hand of Gilles Peterson, who initially brought together Bartz and Maisha in 2019 for performances at the We Out Here Festival and Royal Festival Hall leading to the direct-to-disc session and now to this release on the Brownswood Recordings label.
What we hear is a partnership and understanding that has evolved and developed through touring and recording. Where the Direct-To-Disc Sessions pushed the funk and groove buttons to great effect, here it is the spiritual jazz side that is leant into in a way that links back to the 60s and 70s, but at the same time feels utterly contemporary. And it is a very palatable mix, where the pace is often slow and relaxed, and the layers of sound don’t just wash over you, they seep into your pores, lower the pulse and transport you to far-away places.
Synths are cleverly used to immediately place you in this world, rendering essential texture, framing musical dialogues, and bridging the contradictions of looking both forward and back. But they never overwhelm: this is not a synth album, but an album where synths play an important role in the mix.
Bartz clearly enjoyed this setting. His blowing feels centred and at ease, and you find yourself listening in for every phrase and statement that rolls forth. And he is in good company with MacSween’s piano and Kaner-Lidström’s trumpet, adding creatively to the lead voices across the rhythmic textures and layers that surround. Significantly, the compositions and arrangements are jointly credited, underlining that it is the collective sound that most shines through.
Bartz’s echoing sax over a low synth drone opens the album on the appropriately named ‘Cauldron’, which builds an intoxicating brew of African rhythms urged on by horn statements. A slow, steady bass riff runs through the mesmeric ‘Ground Loop’, coloured with synth phrases over which Kaner-Lidström’s trumpet floats.
The cinematic ‘Eclipse’ is something of a mood piece, with growing interstellar synth notes and trumpet phrases, and raw sax bubbling under and over. Long’s gently flaring cymbal bursts and tumbling drum solo opens the exciting ‘Solar Flare’, which picks up a pacing synth rhythm, pulsing with increasing urgency and the horns adding impetus.
‘Locris’ presents a rich and intense brew that thickens as it is stirred with solos from Bartz and MacSween on piano responding to the rising heat. ’Petrichor’ ushers us towards a shadowier world with percussive textures like drips in a subterranean cavern. ‘Mantra’ closes things out with another steady, slow bass riff and Bartz at his most lyrical across a gently warm, revolving melody that is sure to leave you in your happy place.
‘Where Rivers Meet’ is an immersive and compelling spiritual jazz album for our times and is quite a journey. For the intoxicating vibe it creates, expect to have this album on repeat.
