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| Gerald Cleaver’s Mind-blowing Newest Electronic Album, '22 / 23' Explores The Future and Recalls History Prolific drummer, improviser, and composer Gerald Cleaver releases his latest solo effort, '22 / 23', on May 26. His third electronic record since 2020, 22/23 is also the most ambitious, evolving over 22 immersive tracks. A kind of magnum opus, the record explores a huge variety of textures and moods, while at the same time probing the depths of what has become Cleaver's signature experimental sound. Fans of Signs and Griots will find more to love and much that's new: "I'm getting to know the instruments better, " Cleaver said about the record. "As I was discovering more and more...I felt the need to get that much music out." Best known for his cutting-edge improvisations behind the drumkit, Cleaver has made a career collaborating with a dizzying number of today's most creative musicians, including Benoît Delbecq, Brandon López, Craig Taborn, Henry Threadgill, John Hébert, William Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, and many more. On 22/23, Cleaver brings his honed rhythmic sensibility to new sounds, which spool out elliptically, spitting cyclical motifs that evolve in unexpected directions. Perhaps an unlikely turn for a musician working in the lineage of the AACM, Cleaver's electronic records reveal a different side of his deep musical wisdom, his study of the craft. For Cleaver, that study is all caught up in place—in knowing where one comes from and in letting it speak through you. Growing up in Detroit, Cleaver absorbed the electronic music being developed there, and is finding new ways to synthesize that experience after a lifetime in music. To our ear, this lineage is most immediately clear in the few tracks that approach house music, much more directly than on previous releases. Fred Moten—a poet, scholar, and Cleaver collaborator—has spoken about house as being concerned with rootedness, with staying in one place on the dance floor and letting the bass drum help you dig into something that's yours. You can hear that insistence in the audacious, ten-minute long, "31 Julys, " for example, the four-on-the-floor persistence that gets previewed on "Yeah" and picked up again on "BLó." This kind of pulse-forward approach recedes and resurfaces as the album spins on, never quite turning into a dance record, but buzzing with the same kind of often dark energy. Such driving work, when it happens, is always balanced out by more delicate constructions. On "Conveyances, " for instance, serene, ethereal chords dissolve into dissonance and then back again—before you've had time to fully appreciate either movement, they're both gone, resolving into one another and building different momentum. Likewise, "Early Riser" evokes the sounds of a kalimba with all the graceful irregularity of a wind chime. "Ten, " while not exactly sweet, reprieves listeners in a different way, with a downtempo groove, all clinking and funky. Other tracks—like "Of The Americaan Dream"—glitch with industrial irregularity, approaching a drum & bass groove before subverting expectations once again. A standout statement, "Cake" includes some of the only acoustic instruments we hear on the album: Cleaver's piano at the opening sounds reminiscent of Andrew Hill or Lennie Tristano, while Andrew Dahlke's saxophone rips into a long tradition that hears avant-garde improvisations lend a ferocious energy to apparently unrelated sounds. Across diverse soundscapes, what unites the record is Cleaver's dedication to exploring "sound in and of itself"—to building "varied structures" that sculpt tones based on his sense of what they need, where they belong, where they want to go. This is an idea that Cleaver says is always with him, instilled in his spirit from early collaborations, including the nine important years he spent in Roscoe Mitchell's band. From this perspective, for however different Cleaver's electronic music might be from his ensemble-based work, it also isn't a radical departure; it's rather equally connected to the tradition of sonic exploration that makes no compunction about venturing beyond genre boundaries and even insists on doing so, the very "original music" that the AACM itself continues to pursue. Cleaver's work testifies to the shared impulse for experimental creativity at the heart of what the Art Ensemble of Chicago called "Great Black Music"—no matter the sounds involved. Credits Gerald Cleaver: electronics, voice Jean Carla Rodea: voice Andrew Dahlke: alto & tenor saxophones Mixed by Chris Castagno Mastered by Francisco Holzmann All images by Andrea Rodea & Eric Mares Graphic design by Mark Smith All music by Gerald Cleaver Music (SESAC) All music +℗ Positive Elevation (FIVE SEVEN SEVEN RECORDS MUSIC, ASCAP) Tracklist 1- MDD 8:03 2- No One In Particular 7:10 3- Ten 7:14 4- A Marcha Para Baixo 6:37 5- Potrero 12:46 6- Early Riser 12:50 7- Right Now 4:44 8- Conveyances 5:15 9- Stomp 14:39 10- OK Now 8:01 11- Cake 6:40 12- Of The Americaan Dream 5:33 13- Fate 7:42 14- Yeah 6:24 15- Twins 3:33 16- Who You Are 6:20 17- 31 Julys 10:45 18- BLó 7:16 19- Day And Night 9:01 20- Outer Spaceways 9:31 21- Territories 6:40 22- Today 5:24 write your comments about the article :: © 2023 Jazz News :: home page |