When it comes to music, we don’t always know what we’re going to get, even when we know the players.
But occasionally, you can get a good idea.
Case in point: On April 5th, 2024, jazz saxophonist Ivo Perelman and pianist Matthew Shipp will release their latest in a long line of collaborations, Water Music, a quartet recording that also features bassist Mark Helias and drummer Tom Rainey.
But right now, you can get a sense of how well Perelman, Helias, and Rainey work together courtesy of their new trio album, Truth Seeker (digital). And given that Shipp has collaborated with Perelman frequently, and with Helias a couple times (Pathways, The New Syntax), well…
Recorded at Park West Studios…
in Brooklyn, New York, in December of 2022, Truth Seeker boasts seven tracks and a nearly 70 minute run time. And like many of Perelman’s albums, with Shipp or without, Seeker is clearly freely improvised and mostly occupies the space between free jazz and free jazz adjacent.
Take the opening song, the aggressive and noisy “One,” which opens with Perelman, Helias, and Rainey sounding like they’re fighting each other for dominance, buzzing around each other like a bunch of bees trying to impress their queen, and mixing things up like a bad writer mixing his metaphors. This lasts until the middle, when Perelman and Rainey give Helias a moment to stretch on his own, only to join him for more improvisation that’s relatively moodier, more atmospheric, and less angry-sounding.
Next, Truth Seeker gets even more atmospheric, and moody, for its second track, “Four” (and don’t get me started on how / why Perelman names his songs). While Perelman dishes out some smokey and sustained sax, Helias and Rainey match his mood with some carefully considered rhythms, for what was — for me — a stand out track on this album.
Truth Seeker then becomes somewhat spartan for “Three.” While it finds Perelman periodically shifting between playing fast & loose and slow & smokey, Helias and Rainey are consistently slower and more careful sounding. The result is less noisy than “One” and less mellow than “Four,” but not so much in between as off to the side. Which probably doesn’t make any sense…until you hear it.
Perelman and Co. then launch into what initially sounds like a dirge for Truth Seeker‘s fourth track, “Five,” with Helias slowly rubbing his bass’ strings, and Perelman coming in slow and low after a minute to make this song even darker and moodier before Perelman starts to play a bit faster and peppier, with Helias following suit, until they, and Rainey, approach a fast and noisy crescendo at the end.
Next, Rainey gets his moment in the sun by opening Truth Seeker‘s fifth track, “Six,” with a drum solo that’s more rhythmic than showy. Though it’s only a moment, as Perelman soon joins him with some similarly percussive sax, and Helias finding his spot in between, for a song that is relatively slower but never moody nor textural.
Which brings us to Truth Seeker‘s penultimate track, “Two,” which opens with Perelman and Helias playing even slower and more texturally than on any of the album’s earlier tracks. It doesn’t last, though, as all three slowly get quicker and more aggressive as the song goes on, though things never get to the point where things are super noisy or angry-sounding, even if they are rather spirited at the end.
Truth Seeker then concludes with “Seven,” which, like “Two,” is somewhere in the middle of the angry / atmospheric scale, and in a similar spot on the free form / loosely structured one. While Perelman does occasionally flirt with getting noisy, and Rainey and Helias sometimes go back to the fighting bees approach to provide some rhythmic back-up, the song is ultimately more cohesive than the one that opened this collection.
Suffice it to say,
there’s a lot of good free and free adjacent trio jazz to be found on Truth Seeker. Especially if you like your music loose, improvised, and occasionally aggressive.
All of which bodes well for Water Music. Though we won’t know for sure until it comes out April 5th. If only we had something good to listen to until then…
SCORE: 8.0/10
