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Artist: Craig Taborn
Album: Dream Archives
Genre: Avant-Garde Jazz
Label: ECM Records
Released: 2026
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
01. Coordinates for the Absent (Taborn) - 5:54
02. Feeding Maps to the Fire (Taborn) - 7:18
03. When Kabuya Dances (Allen) - 7:31
04. Mumbo Jumbo (Motian) - 5:22
05. Dream Archive (Taborn) - 11:59
06. Enchant (Taborn) - 11:46
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Personnel:
Craig Taborn - piano, keyboards, electronics
Tomeka Reid - violoncello
Ches Smith - drums, vibraphone, percussion, electronics
Dream Archives is Craig Taborn's first released recording since winning a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (aka "the genius grant") in 2025. His collaborative trio includes cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer/percussionist Ches Smith. The album was recorded in New Haven, Connecticut in 2024 with ECM producer Manfred Eicher. It includes four Taborn originals and two covers: Geri Allen's "When Kabuya Dances" and Paul Motian's "Mumbo Jumbo."
Opening track "Coordinates for the Absent" starts with a spectral, spacious, soundworld where acoustic and electronic elements combine, converse, and blur together in purposeful restraint. If one pays close attention, ghost traces of melody haunt the backdrop. "Feeding Maps to the Fire" offers a near 180 with a progressive piano-and-cello cadence that borders on vanguard classical music before his solo is adorned by Smith's controlled yet insistent percussion, while Reid improvises on the changes with shifting dynamics and tonal colors. Smith's kit illustrates a broad rhythmic vision, tasteful restraint, and adaptability.
"When Kabuya Dances" is offered in direct homage to the late Detroit pianist Geri Allen; she was a major influence on Taborn. It commences with affectionate lyricism, traverses a nursery rhyme, and develops into a dramatic progression that reflects harmonic inquiry via pulsing, knotty joy. Reid plucks her cello like a bass and Smith employs tom-toms and hand percussion. Motian's spectral "Mumbo Jumbo" is elevated by Reid's directly inquisitive playing while Taborn finds the progression and rises to meet her in the second section. Smith, even at his most minimal, proves himself one of the most illustrative and emotional drummers in jazz as he bridges his trio mates' varying tonalities, then adds ballast to their tension in the crescendo.
The final two tracks, "Dream Archive" and "Enchant," are nearly 12 minutes each. The former exists between the poles of musical synchronicity and counterpoint, as textures and harmonics create harmonic tension via Reid's and Taborn's canny, intimate dialogue as it meets Smith's using softly tinkling bells, vibraphone, a triangle, and other ringing percussion. The textured atmosphere is spacious, adorned by gauzy, electronica-tinged environments, and firmly considered modal sequences before engaging an odd-metered vamp.
The latter is serene in intention as Reid offers a lyric arco vamp before Taborn asserts a melody as Smith twins it on his vibes. The cellist leads her bandmates just above bell sounds and muted gongs, sparse chord voicings, and a strange, quietly developing lyricism. Its subtlety becomes more pervasive when harmonic ideas are introduced, explored, and left to the ether. It's a labyrinth of tonalities, space, and warm and mysterious textures, and is, after the Allen homage, nearly cinematic in its fluid engagement. Smith's rolling cymbals played with soft mallets are interspersed with miniscule lyric statements by Taborn. It goes down the abstract rabbit hole, but emerges with its haunting lyric harmony intact in a strident progression. In sum, the music on Dream Archives reflects its title. It is remarkable in transforming shared musical speech into nearly spiritual language. Let's hope this is a band, not a one-off session.
Review by Thom Jurek