Since Time Is Gravity

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 bands 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 albums 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. Thats 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" Bershads 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 bands creative m.o.: "patience, continuance, gradual change, focus on rhythm, rhythmic-centric, building from the rhythm...." The cornets, altos, and Mazzarellas 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