Photo by Annemone Take

This world barreling down the path of uncontrolled chaos demands the need for a wild and untamed free jazz spirit to guide us through it, so let’s give thanks to the cosmos that this spring will mark the return of Irreversible Entanglements — the collective band of acclaimed artists and poets in their own right in Moor Mother’s Camae Aweya, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, bassist Luke Stewart, and drummer Tcheser Holmes — with their fifth album, Future Present Past. If it’s anything like their 2023 standout, Protect Your Light, we’ll again have our heads cracked wide open, minds stretched and tested through their message in prose, and senses expanded through percussive bursts and brass explosions like the original Big Bang.

In spite of how the listen may make you sonically feel, the MOTHERBOARD-featuring “Don’t Lose Your Head” is a cooler heed of warning for a hotly reactionary time. “Don’t lose your head / messing with the gods,” repeats its focal line in mantra. The energy is contained within a vessel more melodious, even if pulled in from sparring symmetries of clattering instruments. In contrast to the album’s other early highlight, the ruminating, hurried call to rise above, “Vibrate Higher”, Irreversible Entanglements approach the same dilemma from an angle explored with a more tempered energy — though not completely tamed.

Edited by: Andrew William Ralph

Irreversible Entanglements’ Future Present Past will be released March 27th on Impulse! Records.