Irreversible Entanglements : Protect Your Light

Now signed to the iconic Impulse! label, Irreversible Entanglements, fronted by poet/activist/vocalist, Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), return with their fourth album, Protect Your Light. It is a fireball of free-form jazz energy that impacts all the senses. Louder Than War’s Gordon Rutherford reviews.

It opens with a mournful saxophone, rolling drums and a voice intoning “free love”. It is a solemn portent to what lies ahead, although the road we are about to travel really shouldn’t be a mystery given this collective’s background.

More than most, this free-jazz quintet, Irreversible Entanglements, has purpose. When they formed in 2015, it wasn’t a casual arrangement that had been dreamed up in a bar over a few drinks. Far from it. The murder of Akai Gurley by the NYPD was the spark that ignited this explosive collective; the catalyst that brought together the collective talents of poet Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), saxophonist Keir Neuringer, bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes. Carrying with them a searing sense of injustice , they made their debut at a Musicians Against Police Brutality event. Four albums in and those feelings of rage still scorch, clearly manifesting themselves in this incendiary fourth album, Protect Your Light.

The album carries a powerful legacy, having been recorded at the notable Rudy Van Gelder studios in New Jersey. Compounding that sense of history is the band’s decision to switch label to the “house that ‘Trane built”, the iconic Impulse!. So, there is significant change afoot, but, thankfully, the indomitable spirit of Irreversible Entanglements’ music continues as before. Plus ça change. Uniting the words of Ayewa with a form of technically outstanding, albeit non-conformist, improvised free jazz, they continue to create a “vehicle for black liberation”.

Like some Afrofuturist lifeforce fuelled by a punk mentality, Protect Your Light somehow feels simultaneously spacious and claustrophobic. It is the sound of artists enraged by the world, yet the overriding emotion is one of sorrow. No wonder. At the top of this piece I referred to the sadness that emerged from the first few bars of the opening track, Free Love. However, Irreversible Entanglements cannot resist toying with us. They quickly draw a veil over this lament when, propelled by the blistering trumpet of Navarro (not for the last time), Free Love soars like a rocket ship. It develops into an exhilarating groove, brimming with sheer electric energy, and this vitality flows through into the following track, the title track, Protect Your Light. Hell, with those Stax-like horns of Navarro and Neuringer blaring, this is pure soul. The mood doesn’t sustain.

We are dropped into this record’s finest tune, Our Land Back. In contrast to the exhilaration of Protect Your Light (the song), Our Land Back opens with those horns creating a funeral march. As it unfolds, Neuringer, the composition’s primary architect, shines, his saxophone wailing and protesting. Moreover, in an album choc-full of social commentary, Our Land Back is the most politically charged track of all. It is described by the band as “an anthem to struggles for self-determination by peoples who have been dispossessed of their land and denied the right to return”. Ayewa references Palestine and South Carolina, Iraq and Ethiopa. That’s a powerful credo, but it is more than matched by the musical vibe that Irreversible Entanglements create here.

This song also introduces us to a technique that is widely deployed by Irreversible Entanglements on this record. Midway through, the song breaks and changes. Frequently, they do that, deviating and sharply changing direction mid-song. It means that one never quite knows what to expect next. The only predictable thing about this record is that it will hit you, somewhere in your soul, like a sledgehammer.

To illustrate, take the superb Root⇔Branch. Another shapeshifter. As it opens, the wailing melancholia of Navarro’s trumpet, backed by Holmes’s intoxicating rhythms, confronts us, creating an aura of sadness. It’s a fitting mood, for Root⇔Branch is a paean to Jaimie Branch, the trumpeter, composer and erstwhile colleague of Irreversible Entanglements, who passed away last year at the age of only thirty-nine. Taken far too early. Momentarily, everything drops out and when the track returns it is wearing a cloak of a different hue. Now it is looser, more upbeat. And isn’t that what grief is like? Periods of pain interspersed with stoicism and a clinging hope that everything will be alright?

Grief is also complex and confusing, engulfing you in uncontrollable waves, which leads us to the track entitled Soundness. Here, Irreversible Entanglements manufacture sheets of sonic discordancy, initially sounding like a band on an extended tune-up. As much punk as it jazz, it’s a jumbled morass of musical spaghetti; these instruments aren’t dancing with one another, they are kick boxing. But then, suddenly, Moor Mother’s voice springs into the fray and everything makes sense. Ayewa has become the focal point, controlling the chaos with her poetry. Like a black hole, the music falls in itself, closing amidst a backdrop of horns that spar and a cello that sighs with sadness. Just like grief.

The album’s shortest track, Celestial Pathways, is another mournful piece and precedes another album highlight. Don’t be misled by the title of this one. The voice of guest vocalist Janice A. Lowe may well pierce through the blackest, densest of cloud like the rays emanating from our planet’s lifeforce, but there is nothing sunny about those horns on the track entitled Sunshine. Lowe introduces the tune with a stunning acapella vocal that will stop you dead in your tracks. Her piano enters, providing a subtle accompaniment. I’m not entirely sure it could be described as a ballad, but it’s as close as you are going to get on this collection.

Bringing Protect Your Light to a stunning close is the phenomenal Degrees Of Freedom. Beginning frenetically with discordant free-form jazz, it feels like the disintegration of Irreversible Entanglements. By now, we know that won’t last. The wonderfully metronomic rhythm section takes over, providing the platform for Navarro’s trumpet and the words of Ayewa. And then, in a stunning coup de grâce, just as he did on Soundness, the sweeping cello of Lester St. Louis delivers another strata of sorrow. It is quite heart-wrenching.

Weighed by its burden of sorrow, Protect Your Light is a heavy album. Grave and intense, it feels as though it carries the tears of a hundred generations. But it is also thrilling and mesmeric, imaginative and daring, and it manages to combine an outstanding blend of technical virtuosity with innovation and emotional heft.

Of course, thanks to her outstanding Jazz Codes album last year, the sheer presence of Moor Mother will draw many to this release. Those who come for that reason, won’t be disappointed. Her words are as potent as ever. But there is more to Irreversible Entanglements than that. This is a band at the very top of their game.

Irreversible Entanglements can be found here. They are also on Facebook and Instagram.

Impulse Records can be found here. They are also on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

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All words by Gordon Rutherford.

from https://louderthanwar.com