James Brandon Lewis Trio - Eye Of I (2023 Anti- Gatefold Vinyl LP)

James Brandon Lewis Trio - Eye of I | Vinyl LP - Anti- (7950-1, gatefold)

James Brandon Lewis has become, in a short time, one of the most talked-about saxophonists in jazz. His tenor sound is huge and vocal, rooted in the blues and the black church and reaching back to the fire of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, but he is no revivalist, and Eye of I, from 2023, shows why the critics have fallen for him. The trio is unusual: instead of the standard bass and drums, Lewis is joined by Chris Hoffman's cello, which loops and drones and sings underneath him, and Max Jaffe's drums, giving the music a dark, springy, almost rock-like weight. The writing is Lewis's, and it moves between muscular grooves, gospel tenderness and free improvisation, but the covers tell you most about him: a gorgeous reading of Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All Be Free", a piece by the free-jazz titan Cecil Taylor, and, to close, the hardcore band Bad Brains' "Fear Not", played with the Fugazi rhythm section of Joe Lally and Brendan Canty. Soul, free jazz and punk, held together by the force of his playing.

That range is the point. Lewis belongs to a tradition of Black American music that never recognised the walls between jazz, soul, gospel and the harder edges of rock, and he moves through all of it without a hint of strain. The record was cut at Martin Bisi's BC Studio, the Brooklyn room that has captured everyone from Sonic Youth to Swans, and Thurston Moore wrote the liner notes, which tells you which lineage Lewis is claiming as much as the jazz one. It won wide acclaim on release and confirmed him as one of the essential voices in current jazz. This copy is the gatefold LP on Anti-, catalogue number 7950-1.