Artist: Vijay Iyer
Album: Uneasy
Genre: Modern Creative
Label: ECM Records
Released: 2021
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- Children of Flint (Iyer) - 6:26
- Combat Breathing (Iyer) - 7:51
- Night and Day (Porter) - 9:34
- Touba (Iyer-Ladd) - 7:18
- Drummer's Song (Allen) - 6:48
- Augury (Iyer) - 3:29
- Configurations (Iyer) - 9:28
- Uneasy (Iyer) - 9:12
- Retrofit (Iyer) - 6:40
- Entrustment (Iyer) - 5:06
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- Personnel:
- Vijay Iyer - piano
- Linda May Han Oh - double bass
- Tyshawn Sorey - drums
Uneasy is Vijay Iyer's first piano trio outing since 2015's Break Stuff. It marks the recorded debut of this group with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh. The trio played live across 2019 in the run-up to this December recording. Sorey has been in Iyer's orbit for 20 years; they first recorded together on 2003's Blood Sutra, and also collaborated on Iyer's Far from Over in 2017. Oh got to know both men while serving as guest faculty at the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music in Alberta, Canada, where Sorey and Iyer are artistic co-directors. Among these nine selections are reworkings of catalog pieces including Iyer's early "Configurations," new works, and interpretations of Cole Porters "Night and Day," and "Drummer's Song" by pianist, mentor, and friend Geri Allen.
The title of set-opener "Children of Flint" refers to an environmental and humanitarian crisis that occurred when the Michigan city's water supply was poisoned with lead due to neglect from its state government, which then attempted a cover-up. An ongoing investigation resulted in charges against the state’s former governor. The song begins as a spectral dirge before Sorey opens it up with ticking ride cymbals and malleted tom-toms. Iyer asserts a loping modal melody that Oh responds to with a driving, circular pulse before delivering a deeply melodic solo. The topical direction continues with "Combat Breathing," which Iyer composed for a 2014 Black Lives Matter action. It offers a knotty cascade of open tonalities, resonant arpeggios, and focused harmonic interplay amid a dynamic rhythmic flow. Iyer balances the elegant changes with angular articulations of them amid percussive left-hand infusions. Sorey dances along his snare with his hi-hat reverberating around Oh's swinging pizzicato fills and accents, while Iyer responds joyously with detailed harmonic inquiry. Allen's "Drummer's Song" begins with complex interlocking rhythms from Iyer and Sorey. Oh bridges their staggered, complex, head-to-head post-bop assertions with a commanding authority. She controls the swirl of harmonic and rhythmic tension, then metes it out a little at a time, acceding to the music's own dictates regarding flow and spark. “Augury” is a solo piano meditation displaying the piano's polyphonic possibilities in Iyer's work across the middle register. The title piece not only infers but illustrates a dramatic paradox. Its rhythmic urgency contrasts with the trio's assertion of color, mode, and dynamic. Fat chords meet driving snares as Oh contrasts with alternating elongated and clipped bassline pulses. Closer "Entrustment" is a processional. Iyer plays droning chords as an intro before Sorey's tom-toms and Oh's bass supply heft and direction. The motion is ever-widening, circular, and constant, dripping with force and poignancy. Uneasy offers a portrait of an emergent trio discovering a multivalently complex language while simultaneously articulating its myriad possibilities. The end result is centered, action-oriented music that is at once gloriously colorful and brilliantly articulated.
Review by Thom Jurek