The five members of US free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements met in 2015 at a protest against police brutality in Boston. Their band emerged organically, naturally, from a shared love of music and urgency for activism. Poet Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, is a beacon in Afrofuturist art. Luke Stewart is one of the most in-demand bassists of his generation with an encyclopaedic knowledge of music from which he draws purposefully. Saxophonist Keir Neuringer shines with his avant-garde techniques and determination while trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes add an irrepressible energy and inventiveness, grounded in classical jazz and Latin and Afro-Caribbean movements. The band is intensely rooted in the stories of local communities but keeps a critical eye on the world.
Their first album - recorded in one take during the first time the five were in a studio together - immediately garnered high praise but it was mainly their impressive live sets that blew everyone's socks off. Leading press like The Wire, Stereogum, AllMusic and NPR crowded in to applaud the quintet the loudest. By the third album 'Open The Gates', comparisons to Sun Ra and the New York Art Quartet were emerging. Then last year, they released 'Protect Your Light' on the legendary Impulse! Records, an album that feels very 'accomplished' without detracting from the group's punky essence. It is music full of light and love that simultaneously dares to push where it hurts. The world, after all, is not just one or the other; it is many things at once. Irreversible Entanglements manages to powerfully fuse all those facets into a frenzied trip. Seeing is believing!
Band line-up::
Camea Ayewa, vocals
Luke Stewart, bass
Keir Neuringer, saxophone
Aquiles Navarro, trumpet
Tcheser Holmes, drums