Since Time Is Gravity is the seventh album by
Natural Information Society. Led by guimbri player/bassist
Joshua Adams since 2010,
NIS has a core lineup that includes
Lisa Alvarado on harmonium,
Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, and
Jason Stein on bass clarinet. Guests are a big part of the band's recorded and performance histories, and this set is no different. Assisting the group this time are Chicago tenor sax legend
Ari Brown, percussionist
Hamid Drake, harpist
Kara Bershad, alto saxophonists
Mai Sugimoto and
Nick Mazarella, and cornet players
Ben Lamar Gay and
Josh Berman. All 11 musicians are present on three of the album's tracks.
Abrams' original music is deeply inspired by Gnawan healing music from Morocco, but almost by extension of his vast experience (
Roots,
Tortoise,
Black Earth Ensemble, etc.), it readily embraces, borrows from, and intersects with other musics too. Often his cornucopia of other sounds has (deliberately) overshadowed jazz. That's not true here. Given the variety of reeds, winds, and brass here, the connection is explicit.
"Moontide Chorus" is one of three jams that feature the entire band.
Abrams plays a plucked circular pattern on guimbri for 30 seconds before
Avery and
Drake add tom-toms and other percussion. When the stacked horns enter, playing in a circular minor mode, they create a lyric backdrop for
Brown, who answers their droning flow. Over nearly seven minutes, his resonant soloing adds depth and dimension to the horn section, and frames the rhythm section with modal lyricism. "Is" also features the entire ensemble. Slow, rolling hand percussion, circular guimbri, and harmonium set a languid pace as
Brown and his fellow brass, reed, and wind players offer staggered, bell-like drones.
Brown applies the modal blues in soloing across most of the jam. On the 18-minute "Murmuration"
Bershad's harp twins the lead with guimbri. However, she rarely deviates from the simple, repetitive melodic figure. The horns and harmonium join at regular intervals, as
Abrams and
Drake engage in rhythmic interplay, adding and subtracting instrumentation with every pass along with the droning vamp. "Stimergy," a 13-minute exercise, walks a wonky vanguard rhythmic line with stellar syncopation and conversation between
Drake and
Avery. The horns follow in eerie cadence, as flutes, saxes, and cornets entwine, taking turns soloing and engaging in complex harmonic dialogue. The entire 11-piece reenters on closer "Gravity" is a short work that emerges from the band's creative m.o.: "patience, continuance, gradual change, focus on rhythm, rhythmic-centric, building from the rhythm...." The cornets, altos, and
Mazzarella's tenor offer a circular chorus in dovetailing rounds as
Brown delivers a deep blue solo with guttural bursts and squeals.
Since Time Is Gravity returns
NIS to their exploratory rhythm and overtone roots even as they make more room for jazz harmony and rhythmic sensibilities while highlighting the abundance of soloists among them. ~ Thom Jurek