About

Irreversible Entanglements is a band built on improvisation, five jazz virtuosos—poet/vocalist Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and drummer Tcheser Holmes—coalescing around an idea and discovering where it takes them. Their live shows are typically presented as a single piece of music, one movement seamlessly evolving into the next as they explore their anti-colonial and anti-fascist politics through sound. Their albums so far have mirrored this approach. After bonding during a Musicians Against Police Brutality event, they recorded their self-titled 2017 debut in a single day in Brooklyn, their first time performing as a collective.

This is Irreversible Entanglements’ first album for storied jazz label Impulse!, home to greats like John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders. To record it, the band set up shop at Rudy Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, a historic space inhabited by the ghosts of jazz giants. And though the studio is not referenced specifically, its spiritual energy seems to carry through the album. On “Soundness,” Ayewa beckons us inside (“You are safe here/In the room”) and lets fluttering horns and reeds wash over us, connecting the practice of prayer to the safety of the spaces in which it is conducted. These are the places where the energy of the universe is concentrated, cultivated, and protected: the places where music is made. Pitchfork