If ever there were a more accurately titled
jazz record, one would be hard-pressed to find it. Bassist
Josh Abrams (formerly of
Roots and currently of
Town and Country) has enlisted the help of Chicago guitar boss
Jeff Parker, Italian reed maestro
Guillermo Gregorio, and European brass journeyman
Axel Doerner in order to completely blur the lines between
free improvisation,
free jazz and "free composition." Here is a field of play, sketched out over ten selections ranging from four-and-one-half minutes to just over nine minutes in length that strip music of its barest essentials for performing in a group setting, and then sets about to perform these works as a group. Elements of silence, tonality, texture, dynamic, and pure spatial relationship serve to uninvent preconceived notions of all of the preceding terms. Certainly
jazz,
free jazz,
free improv, and composition come into the body of this music, but these entrances are disembodied within the larger context of exploration and curiosity. And yet, the sounds here are far from academic. They are living and breathing encounters with what lies just beyond the solo or group interaction. Interplay enters into language, and that language into silence. Strange, mysterious, and stunningly beautiful,
Cipher is a modern enigma. ~ Thom Jurek
![The Messenger: Live at the Original Velvet Lounge [CD]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0038153057022_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "The Messenger: Live at the Original Velvet Lounge [CD]")
