Irreversible Entanglements At EartH

Irreversible Entanglements
EartH Theatre
Protect Your Light
Hackney, London
November 15, 2023

Co-winners of this parish's Best Album of 2023 for Protect Your Light (Impulse!), sharing the blunt with the late Jaimie Branch's Fly Or Die quartet's ((World War)) (International Anthem), Irreversible Entanglements' return to the London Jazz Festival was among the most eagerly anticipated gigs of this year's event. It was, fittingly, at EartH (Evolutionary Arts Hackney), a multi-arts performance space within a stone's throw of Café Oto and Total Refreshment Centre, where Branch recorded Fly Or Die II: Bird Dogs Of Paradise (International Anthem) in 2018. The three venues are part of the Hackney Renaissance (Hackney being a neighbourhood in north-east London), which has been both a catalyst and a beneficiary of London's new alternative jazz scene. Other such Hackney watering holes are Church of Sound, Brilliant Corners and the Vortex. But the travelogue can wait for another occasion.

Irreversible Entanglements' connections with Branch, however, run deeper than geographical concurrence. Until their move to Impulse! this year, the band was a labelmate with Branch and Fly Or Die at International Anthem, where they had released three magnificent albums. The two liberation-oriented bands were on the same team, and post-Branch the musicians still are. Fly Or Die's cellist, Lester St. Louis, guests on two tracks on Protect Your Light, including "Root And Branch," which was written by Irreversible Entanglement's saxophonist Keir Neuringer and performance poet Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), and which is dedicated to Branch.

Irreversible Entanglements was formed in 2015, after Neuringer, Ayewa and bassist Luke Stewart met at a Musicians Against Police Brutality protest concerning a fatal shooting by the NYPD. Trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes joined soon afterwards. Like Branch and Fly Or Die, the band is among that disappointingly small number of US jazz luminaries who have not been afraid to voice their opposition to the seemingly inexorable march of fascism in their country, which will hit the fan with the presidential election in 2024 (for more on that, see here). The band was acknowledged as such by the EartH emcee and received cheers for it from the packed auditorium.

And to those cheers, Irreversible Entanglements began a resequenced and extended—and high decibel—performance of all the material on Protect Your Light, also weaving in "No Más" from Who Sent You? (International Anthem, 2020). The set began delicately with small percussion instruments and soft chanting, and then built to the first of some half a dozen blazing climaxes. It was a ninety-minute outpouring of fire, passion and rough-cut beauty, off the scale in its intensity.

The downside was that most of Ayewa's words—which are more than worth hearing, as are the subtleties of cadence she brings to her performance—were lost among the thunder. The only tune on which she could be clearly heard was the relatively (repeat relatively) subdued "Our Land Back." The rest of the time, only snippets of verse emerged..."We call you in the room, come on in the room... you are safe here, you are welcomed here... let's fly, let's get free... let's get free from all the trouble... nothing can hold us down... take me down to the river, to a deeper past... before oil, before the master's plan... keep fighting, keep shouting, keep voting..." But we heard enough to get the message.

What would be welcome from Impulse! next is a live album, remixed to render Ayewa as clearly audible as the rest of the band. And this time it would be good to have a double disc, like the band's International Anthem chef d'oeuvre, 2021's Open The Gates. To borrow from Fats Waller, the more you hear Irreversible Entanglements, you more you hear them.

Meanwhile, the seven hundred or so people who were present at EartH will likely have the performance burnt into their memories, to be relived and taken heart from in the future. It was a morale boosting, magical performance. Poetry 'n' jazz only rarely achieves this degree of impact.

Set List

Sunshine; Free Love; Soundness; Root And Branch; Celestial Pathways; No Más; Degrees Of Freedom; Our Land Back; Protect Your Light.

Personnel

Camae Ayewa: voice, percussion; Aquiles Navarro: trumpet, percussion, synth; Keir Neuringer: soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, percussion, synth; Luke Stewart: upright acoustic bass, percussion; Tcheser Holmes: drums, percussion.

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