A mere year and a half after the Wadada Leo Smith encounter Araminta, the highly progressive improv trio Harriet Tubman quickly solidifies the ground they’ve gained over the last twenty years as one of the leaders in that musical space. The Terror End of Beauty is the latest chapter for the aggressively audacious project of Brandon Ross (guitar), Melvin Gibbs (bass) and J.T. Lewis (drums).
Whereas we described the prior release as “liberally tossing jazz, funk, rock, dub and a little electronica into a murky sonic stew,” The Terror End of Beauty continues with those lofty ideas and one ups it with deeper experimentations into rhythms.
A ‘patting juba’ polyrhythm braid forms the foundation of “Farther Unknown” but the intrigue is further jacked by Ross’ use of feedback squall to simulate a chant. A curious meld of ideas continue with “3000 Worlds,” where Gibbs’ dub bass combines with Lewis’ funky backbeat against a spooky electro backdrop created by producer Scotty Hard’s effects and loops. Lewis gets even more muscular on “The Green Book Blues,” a reference to the same, Jim Crow-era guide of hassle-free traveling for African Americans in the South as the Green Book movie currently out in theaters. The rhythm of the first section, though, comes from West Africa; the second is futuristic but just as provocative.
Though no blues is explicitly played here, it’s always lurking in the dark shadows of their music, shading the three-dub grooves of “Five Points.” “Unseen Advance of the Aquifarian” is a jam, but one where everyone is so locked into one another; the rhythm section is so indestructible that even when things tighten up and take a left turn, Ross is freed up to do pretty much what he wants and it will work.
If Gibbs’ “The Terror End of Beauty” sounds like a Sonny Sharrock song, that might be because he wrote it as a tribute to his late mentor, where soulful allure and abrasive abstraction collide together in a holistic form. “Redemption Song” is spirituality expressed Harriet Tubman style, meaning there’s an urgency to go along with the peacefulness.
Often dirty and distorted, sometimes cataclysmic but always cathartic, Harriet Tubman again asserts itself within the vanguard of exploratory jazz. The Terror End of Beauty, presented by Sunnyside Records, is now out for sale.
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