Many jazz fans first encountered the deeply expressive music of saxophonist/composer
James Brandon Lewis on 2014's
Divine Travels in the company of pianist
Matthew Shipp, bassist
William Parker, and drummer
Gerald Cleaver. Since then, he's released a slew of fascinating projects, including his award-winning breakthrough, 2021's
Jesup Wagon, a carefully conceived, artfully executed, musically diverse investigation of George Washington Carver's life and achievements.
Eye of I, his follow-up and
Anti- debut, is performed by the core trio of
Lewis on tenor sax,
Christopher Hoffman on cello and pedals, and
Max Jaffe on drums. These 11 tunes all offer kinetic immediacy. They reveal
Lewis' compositional skill, articulated across tense balladry, muscular post-bop, spacey gospel, blues, and modal and spiritual jazz, balanced by unruly sonics, textured dissonance, and a profound lyric sensibility.
The brief, angular, almost funky 44-second opener "Foreground" sounds like a jet readying for takeoff. It's followed by a devastating, beautiful read of
Donny Hathaway's soul-gospel classic "Someday We'll All Be Free."
Kirk Knuffke guests on cornet, playing twinned and responsorial lines to
Lewis' horn as
Hoffman's electronically distorted cello rumbles like an electric guitar and
Jaffe's martial drum kit underscores its emotionally open feel without forsaking its musicality. "The Blues Still Blossoms" isn't like any other blues.
Lewis investigates a short, repetitive nursery rhyme-esque melody (think
Ornette Coleman), inverting and expanding notes in call and response with the rhythm section as they slip the 12-bar frame. The title track spends its first minute with a distorted, funereal cello over rumbling, constantly rolling tom-toms. When
Lewis enters -- in full wail -- one can hear the ghosts of
Albert Ayler and
John Coltrane in his playing. "Womb Water" is an innovative, tonally compelling adaptation of
Cecil Taylor's "Womb Waters Scent of the Burning Armadillo Shell" from 1984's
Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants), followed by another dissonant blowing interlude ("Background") that introduces the gorgeous "Send Seraphic Beings," a hip post-bop stroller.
Lewis reaches into his horn's lower register, cycles the melody, and solos on an entirely different plane as the rhythm section dances and swings with a gentle Latin groove.
Knuffke assists again on "Even the Sparrow," a jazz-gospel dirge with ambitious interaction between the horns as pedaled cello creates rhapsodic harmonies in the backdrop. On closer "Fear Not,"
Lewis' trio plays alongside Washington, D.C. post-punk trio
the Messthetics, featuring former
Fugazi members
Joe Lally (bass) and
Brendan Canty (drums) with renowned jazz-rock guitarist
Anthony Pirog.
Lewis and
Hoffman trade lines amidst the plodding force of two drummers.
Pirog's guitar is all fuzz and bleat, and it's entwined with electric bass.
Lewis' tenor goes right at
Pirog and the drummers. His circular theme roils and is propelled to become a headbanger, wedding unhinged anthemic melody to unsettling dynamic and tonal chaos before finding assonant resolution.
Eye of I showcases the immediacy and range in
Lewis' musical imagination in composition, improvisation, and communication with a freer, more immediately instinctive persona on full display. All killer, no filler. ~ Thom Jurek
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