With members consisting of pianist Matthew Shipp, saxophonist Allen Lowe, bassist Kevin Ray and drummer Gerald Cleaver, you could call East Axis a supergroup of highly improvised jazz. But it’s more interesting to dwell on how this collection of distinctive voices use this occasion to make spontaneous music together that opens up new wrinkles in their respective approaches.
Cool With That sounds like Shipp, Lowe, Ray and Cleaver, but it doesn’t sound like any of them in a vacuum. Sure, everyone’s playing their asses off, but they do it while closely connecting to everyone else and making melodies on the fly.
“A Side” begins with a fragile intro and after a couple of minutes, effortlessly moves into a meaty main segment where it seems the entire quartet is functioning as the rhythm section. Lowe, however, makes melodic flourishes that tells a story, while Shipp and Lowe take turns tactfully backing off for short spells, exposing the creative, unpremeditated groove set up by Ray and Cleaver.
That rhythm section is swinging like the dickens on “Oh Hell I Forgot That” even as Shipp races forward in a Cecil Taylor frame of mind. Yet, it is way more congruous than words can describe. Lowe, a radically under-appreciated figure in jazz, is smoldering and unrelenting on tenor sax, pushed hard by Shipp. Ray is given a lot of space to start “Social Distance” and afterwards, Lowe and Shipp add additional texture and complexity.
“I’m Cool With That” hints strongly at the blues, but artfully dodges playing it straight. In particular, Shipp finds ways to assert his own language to liven up this very old music form, and the looseness and unpredictability coming from Cleaver and Ray also make this much too relaxed and natural to regard it as some tossed-off genre exercise.
Cool With That ends with a half-hour beast, “One.” The four flow meter-less together, which is where Cleaver really excels, and ultimately the master drummer leads the other three into a groove. Lowe and Shipp ride hard on that rhythm handing off to each other after making often-dramatic statements until the floor is handed to Cleaver and then Ray, who trades eights with Shipp and Lowe. Cleaver applies more magic when somewhere around the midpoint of the performance, he shepherds the whole group into a new rhythm pattern nearly imperceptibly. He repeats this move again to launch the song’s final, descending segment.
Kevin Ray nicely summed the experience in playing in this group when he shared that “You never know where the music will go, just that it’s somewhere exciting, and you hope you can keep up.” The challenge for listeners to keep up is also central to the thrill of listening to this music.
Cool With That is available now, from ESP-Disk.
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