Apple Cores

James Brandon Lewis has been busy. During the last four years, hes given us radically different visions of jazz that together express a holistic jazz vision. Jesup Wagon with Red Lilly Quintet is a jazz meditation on George Washington Carver. That band approached gospel on For Mahalia, With Love, while his extended sextet issued the vanguard fusion set Eye of I for Anti-. Last year it was the punky The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis. Apple Cores is his sophomore outing for Anti-, a trio date with longtime collaborators Josh Werner on guitar and bass, and drummer/mbira player Chad Taylor. The creative saints providing inspiration here are poet, activist, and author Amiri Baraka and trumpeter Don Cherry. The album title reflects the name of Barakas Downbeat column in the 1960s. Cherry looms even larger, as his aesthetic spirit offers guidance here. This set, unlike label debut Eye of I, leaves rock out of the equation in favor of a vanguard jazz base that channels dubwise reggae grooves, organic hip-hop beats, and steamy, sticky funk. The opening track, "Apple Cores #1," is the first of three strategically placed improvisations. As Taylor lays down funky breaks, Werners hypnotic bassline frames Lewis articulation of the wandering melody in improvisation. The single "Prince Eugene" uses mbira as a counter-and-companion rhythmic pulse while Taylor plays with almost incantatory repetition. Lewis modal solo offers slow, melodic fragments in a slippery vamp joining dub to spiritual jazz. "Five Spots to Caravan" is titled for the legendary Five Spot in New York, where the Ornette Coleman Quartet debuted in 1959, while Caravan of Dreams, was a short-lived venue where Colemans group was the house band. Its exploratory, circular, and funky, with doomy guitar vamps. The albums midsection offers two more direct Cherry references. The first, "Remember Brooklyn & Moki" (the trumpeters wife), weds dubwise backbeats to funked-up bass and airy tenor saxophone that explores the spaces between the rhythm players and himself in a soulful balladic melody referencing Cherrys Where Is Brooklyn? "Broken Shadows" reflects the 1971 session by the Coleman sextet included in the Complete Science Fiction Sessions. Offered in a minor mode, its communication is intimate with barely restrained energy. The funkiest grooves occur in "D.C. Got Pocket," with a spiny bassline, spiraling guitars, and gutbucket breaks, as Lewis explores the horns mid and upper registers. On "Dont Forget Jayne," he references poet Jayne Cortez and the Firespitters, composed of members of Colemans Prime Time. The interplay between Taylor and Werner is almost symbiotic, at once urgent and processional, charging the heavens while carving out a tender earthly lyric. Closer "Exactly, Our Music" finds Werners guitar offering trancelike micro-melodies as Lewis solos around and through him, with Taylor holding down the circular groove. Apple Cores is a stellar tribute to Lewis inspirations; his band pulls it off without seams or dead ends. This music is a signpost in jazzs evolution; it intersects past, present, and future. ~ Thom Jurek