Search - Vijay Iyer :: Reimagining

The sonic assault has seldom sounded so beautiful

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 05/22/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Sometimes I think wunderkinder jazzers like piano/leader Iyer and alto sax player Mahanthrappa, who've been together for about a decade or so, initially stive to establish a unique sound. After that comes the beauty. With sturm und drang aplenty on their first discs together, they certainly established a sound--driving, frenetic, percussive, wild-and-woolly. What it lacked in polish, it made up in energy and invention.



And although this disc isn't exactly what I'd call polished, it certainly displays a lot more shape, restraint, and structural rigor than their previous outings. Without losing any of the fire and passion. What's missing is some of the excess, replaced by a restless, relentless search for the exact right expressive mode for what they seek to communicate. It's almost as if the cumbersome dross that tended to militate against their finest moments has been--voila!--magically combusted, leaving pure musical surfaces to shine with uncanny brilliance.



One thing that's obvious: the sound comes very deeply delved from unique cultural and musical experiences--East Indian, modal jazz, Euro/American classical, hip-hop, dance, poetry, and ritualized musics. All these they've managed to blend into something as attractive as it is unique.



Somewhat surprisingly, it all comes wrapped in a kind of unexpected joyousness; there's just lots of wonderful, youthful, exuberant music gushing out all over this remarkable disc. Combined with a unique vision brilliantly pulled off, this session marks one of the high points of the year for me."

Raging Beauty

Troy Collins | Lancaster, PA United States | 06/29/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Having made the leap to the majors, pianist and composer Vijay Iyer's Savoy debut "Reimagining" sounds no less intense than his previous independent releases than it does more fully realized. Where his previous quartet offerings, 2003's "Blood Sutra" and 2001's "Panoptic Modes" were youthful explorations full of brio, "Reimagining" inverts the equation by promoting tunefulness over unbridled enthusiasm. This recurrent focus on melody in all its bittersweet glory continues to arrive bolstered by an undercurrent of rhythmic turbulence.



The son of Indian immigrants, like his long-term foil, altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa, Iyer has a truly equitable worldview in regards to the jazz canon and its influences. Abstracted break beats, funky ostinatos, splintery tone clusters, knotty angularity, even introspective melody all make their way into his systematic structures. Iyer employs one of the most tireless rhythm sections in contemporary jazz, capable of supporting harmonic counterpoint, modulating time signatures and layered polyrhythms all at once. Long term bassist Stephan Crump holds down the low end while 19 year old newcomer (and grandson of Roy Haynes) Marcus Gilmore more than holds his own in the company of giants. Altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa is a distinctive stylist with a most cerebral approach. Like the free-er cousin of former M-Basers Greg Osby and Steve Coleman, releasing waves of cyclical arpeggios with his searing white-hot tone, he is the perfect match for Iyer's own ecstatic excursions. Hammered left hand root notes and dissonant block chords intermingle with swirling right hand pyrotechnics. Industrious without being flamboyant, Iyer occasionally reveals a deft sense of touch, especially on his deconstructed, darkly minimalist solo interpretation of John Lennon's "Imagine."



Iyer's seminal involvement with Steve Coleman's M-Base school of hyper rhythmic metric modulation and its structural dependence on polyrythms is still evident in his quartet writing. Iyer's M-Base roots come to the fore on the jaunty trio workout "Cardio" and the aggressive, show stopping quartet set piece, "Phalanx." But this time out, melody is given not only a nod, but precedent over angularity and odd time signatures. "Song For Midwood" utilizes a throbbing modal bass pulse that rides a steady vamp only to be occasionally interrupted by hyper-kinetic stints of double-timed improvisation. Mahanthappa's scorching, thematic variations and Iyer's kaleidoscopic keyboard runs drive the quartet into a frenzy of collective fury, without ever leaving the plaintive melody behind. This new found focus on song forms adds one more layer to the quartet's already heady brew. Some of Iyer's most emotionally resonant playing arrives in the few trio pieces, such as the spartan, melancholy "Inertia" and the upbeat, optimistic "Composites." "Experience" contains some of the quartet's most beautiful playing despite the rhythm's insistent forward momentum. Full of angular linearity and mind-numbing time shifts, "Revolutions" opens the album with a roiling, syncopated undertow that is so intricate it practically defies standard time signatures. The quartet's intricate level of interplay embodies a sense of adventurousness to it that is sorely missing in most contemporary acoustic jazz.



While Iyer and his peers Jason Moran and Matthew Shipp have long been touted as the Second Coming for post-free-jazz pianists, they have all taken pains to mature their craft and in so doing creating a body of work that is thrilling on more than just a primal level. "Reimagining" officially announces Iyer has fully arrived as a player to be reckoned with."

Iyer keeps on developing

N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 06/13/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This disc is still very much in the mold of Iyer & Mahanthappa's quartet recordings--white-hot intensity, incredibly dense metrical layerings, a serious political/postcolonial agenda simmering in the background--but it also shows how Iyer keeps refining & reworking his music. I was struck, listening to Mahanthappa's earlier _Black Water_ just after listening to this one, how this CD is much less obviously "like" Coltrane, Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, or whoever than their earlier work--Iyer & Mahanthappa are starting to make jazz that's completely sui generis. If anything the new ingredient here is an influx of classical influences--maybe I just hadn't noticed this before in his music, but on this disc it's pretty obvious, especially on "Inertia" which strongly recalls Messiaen's "Louanges" in the _Quartet for the End of Time_. Stephan Crump remains on bass from Iyer's previous discs but _Blood Sutra_'s Tyshawn Sorey is replaced by drummer Marcus Gilmore, who's less teeth-grittingly intense than Sorey but equally adept at handling the exacting compound metres & subdivisions of Iyer's grooves. It's a less full-bore album than _Blood Sutra_ or its predecessor _Panoptic Modes_ but it's still a pretty heady brew, & hardly restful (as Francis Davis noted in a review, there are no weak beats in this music, giving even the more spacious & restrained pieces a sense of continuous pressure). The disc ends with a solo-piano reworking of John Lennon's "Imagine", with the song's original mood made much darker & more tenuous, though not utterly subverted. (The track makes me wonder if Iyer will ever get around to a solo album or a duo album with Mahanthappa--it would be an interesting pendent to the series of quartet albums.)



On balance I think I still slightly prefer _Blood Sutra_ but this is still a very strong album. Check it out."