After years of key involvement with several of jazz’s most vital projects of the current scene — like The Exploding Star Orchestra and the James Brandon Lewis Quartet — Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor have come back together again. Their Chicago Underground Duo has been the centerpiece of the whole out-jazz/indie rock/electro-acoustic Chicago Underground movement that sprung up in the Windy City back in the mid 90’s, and with so many vistas for expanding on their original vision already exploited, they ain’t done yet.
Hyperglyph (International Anthem, August 15 2025) points up to the great strides the Duo has made since their first album 12 Degrees of Freedom, recorded in 1997. It’s not so much their playing style or how they mesh their individual characteristics together, they got that part down pat from the start. But over the years, they shoveled in more music forms from all over the globe, blending it in with every influence they’ve brandished before, a melting pot that brings together Louis Armstrong, King Tubby, Fela Kuti, Plux Quba and early electric Miles into the most exotic, avant, and, yes, accessible stew. Somehow, Hyperglyph continues building on that.
Mazurek and Taylor started out as advanced improvisors, but within (and outside) their partnership, they’ve since developed improvisation acumen with the process of making the record, too. Some songs are single-take affairs, while others involved heavy post-production; they trust their instincts to tell them the degree to take one path or the other. That’s why a heavily processed track such as the fleeting, hard electronic thump of “Rhythm Cloth” and “Contents of Your Heavenly Body” with the esoteric kalimba/electric piano interaction “Succulent Amber” can end up on the same record.
So there’s no shortage of risk-taking on Hyperglyph, but the amount of light let in seems greater this time out. It’s a brighter group of pieces than their previous work, perhaps better reflecting the mood of the folk hues from distant lands that informed much of this music.
“Click Song,” the advance single we previously put an ear on, kicks off the album in a joyful mood, and the happy beats flow right into the second single “Hyperglyph,” where they’ve mastered the art of supplementing African percussion with modular synths in a way that doesn’t diminish the authenticity. Mazurek blows cornet fire over it and then the song concludes with a festive chant amidst a fuzzy haze.
A festive horn paces “Hemiunu,” a somewhat odd mixture of acoustic and electronic instruments that is open and airy where others might have made it sound clustered. “The Gathering” could refer to the accumulating din of the first half, which dissipates into a gentle collision of Taylor’s mbira with Mazurek’s sample bank of cyber sounds, humanized by his aching trumpet.
The three part “Egyptian Suite” is where they go completely organic (and acoustic), with minimal dubs detected. Taylor’s drums dominate the first and final parts, bracketing a middle potion where Taylor trades the battery of beats for the swipes of the cymbals to cast a ringing cloud of metallic drones. That provides a prime backdrop for Muzurek’s penetrating trumpet.
Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor didn’t lose any momentum from the eleven years when their partnership went dormant, because they blazed trails together for a long time before. They’re still blazing with Hyperglyph.
Preorder Hyperglyph from Bandcamp.
*** Chicago Underground Duo CD’s and vinyl on Amazon ***
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