It’s hard to nail this one down, and this for the best. Look at that cover art, I mean, come on. Shit is gorgeous, and it does a hell of a job of visualizing the spiraling depths this album will take you into. This is a fearless ensemble of musicians who freely and openly embrace a large fusion of ideas and concepts into their sound and manage to wring out some absolute bangers in unorthodox ways that always keep the listener invested. It’s a case of feeling like the album cover really does sell you on the sound, it sounds like it looks – but yet you’re probably wrong about what you think that’s gonna be until you listen to it.

Hearing soaring big band jazz crescendo freakouts being matched with a hard beat that came together in a great climax that felt truly earned was awesome. It’s not a secret that the authentic organic aspects of jazz lend themselves really well to the shimmering slick coolness of electronics, but rarely is it handled with such confidence, excitement, and grace. It feels as though nothing was left on the table. An immediate comparison from this same year that one may wish to make would be with Fire! Orchestra’s latest record, another notable experimental jazz heavy hitter from 2023. That said, I think I like this one a lot more. The openly avantgarde leanings and dabblings in all sorts of styles and sounds and effects that offer generously hypnotic walls of delicate yet intricately deep walls of big groovy psychedelic sound is absolutely killer. These are people who know what they’re doing, and are rocking out with their cocks out. This is ferocious, fiery, organic stuff that you can get utterly baked to, trip to, dance to, meditate to, whatever your heart desires, this music seems to find a match to it is it takes you down its many interesting corridors of sounds and ideas, never lingering too long on any one thing, but never moving so fast so as to bewilder the listener, as so many albums within the avant-prog sphere may tend to do. Ideas have time to marinate and grow in comfortable ways, yet still remain paced wonderfully, nothing gets dull once the gears start cranking.

The mood is all over, but it always remains exciting, the ride doesn’t stop. The “Witches Brew” suite in particular is not only a great Davis shoutout, but shows the fun the band is willing to have with their sound, tapping into some more silly and/or cinematic moments while still embracing absolutely heavy downright brutal sounds. The way that all of these moods and motivations are balanced and toyed with is a great deal of fun to partake in. There’s a great deal of dynamics on this album that really make all the different ideas and motifs shine. And the pacing therein, once again, shines. Things are consistently interesting, you never know what new tool will be pulled from the palette to enact some fun playabout within the tune to mix things up in a natural yet surprising way. The music really feels alive and kaleidoscopic, and that makes this a very fun and highly entertaining and relistenable jaunt to partake in.

Get some.