There was a week long period back in 2019 when it seemed OBLADADA lived in a bubble created by Natural Information Society. The huge magnetic block of Mandatory Reality, the spatial 65-minute-long grid of the album’s first two tracks, In Memory’s Prism and Finite seemed to effortlessly soundtrack everything we did. There was a form of alchemy dripping off this strange acoustic jazz that had serval times almost brought us to tears at its sublimely understated purity and beauty.
Led by Joshua Abrams, the ensemble has birthed a whole string of albums – a grooving, rhythmically informed style of jazz. Previous albums like Magnetoception, Represencing, Simultonality and the live descension (Out of Our Constrictions) with Evan Parker, all chug along with patterned intoxicating precision.
However, Mandatory Reality always seemed to be the album that a creative zenith was reached, a more spacious, almost avant garde construction beyond pure jazz, and it remains one of our absolute favourite albums.
Naturally, the new album Since Time Is Gravity, grows out of all these past recordings, whilst again adding in flourishes of newness. This time the core NIS of Abrams (guimbri & bass), Lisa Alvarado (harmonium) Mikel Patrick Avery (percussion) & Jason Stein (bass clarinet) are Hamid Drake (drums), Josh Berman & Ben Lamar Gay (cornets), Nick Mazzarella & Mai Sugimoto (alto saxophones & flute), Kara Bershad (harp) & Ari Brown (tenor saxophone).
Before we heard a note, again we played a little game that does seem to work. Every release sleeve features artwork by band member Lisa Alvarado. Previous albums suggest blanket approaches where interlocking visuals all seem to reflect the spirit in which the music was made. Colours, shapes, and forms all give a sense of the music within.
But with Since Time Is Gravity, the sleeve suggests a different strategy- separate microcosms all rippling and swirling together, like all of the 8 tracks happily cohabit whilst still retaining their own spaces. It’s a psychedelic visual language for sure, but as the album opens out, it does hold true.
Moontide Chorus is immediately a shifting pattern of funky drums and brass slowly growing more intense as the sounds draws you in. Next up, the 12 minutes of Is, quickly settles into endless brassy cyclical patterns… Things final settle in the blissful tumbling harp lined shuffle of Murmuration. 18 minutes where the pace rises and falls, allowing new sounds to slowly appear over the horizon.
These first three tracks also neatly form the first disc of this double album and in many ways, present another beautiful and understated example of Natural Information Society’s oeuvre. However, with the rougher more textural Wane opens the second half of the album, centred on Abram’s guembri, the mood feels different. The oddly grafted title of Stigmergy suggests the earlier work, complete with heartbeat/breathing/paddled pacing, but this time, the mixture is somehow richer and little production touches eek out an unusually hypnotic psychedelic quality.
Immemorial is all heat hazed tabla and harmonium drones, whilst Wax fixates on tiny shards of rhythm. The closer, Gravity draws an odd flute lined version of itself and things grow more lopsided and chaotic…
Since Time Is Gravity plays through several times with a familiarity that initially sits at odds with the assumed hit of something new. Whilst this new album somehow doesn’t initially quite feel like a radical step forward in the way that Mandatory Reality did, the real gems buried here are subtle and reveal, themselves slowly as the album washes repeatedly over you.
In a world where instant gratification is seen as an objective for shrinking attention spans, deliberate slower burners like Since Time Is Gravity thankfully does the opposite. An album to clear time in your schedule for, and give space to. Then, it will emit some sort of psychoactive subtlety. When it unlocks, you’ll know…
Since Time Is Gravity is out now on Eremite Records, available digitally and double vinyl
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