Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp String Trio: Armageddon Flower

Saxophonist Ivo Perelman's albums come at us relentlessly. He is prolific. Multiple albums per year is his norm. His approach is, more often than not, sound and fury, signifying... what? It is hard to say. Of his Armageddon Flower he says: "Listening to this music is akin to reading the Book of Revelations in the Bible."

Armageddon Flowers sounds like a search for truth, a deep quest for Rama or the Holy Ghost, the workings of the intricacies of string theory or any other concept that attempts to explain the existence of the universe.

String theory? Perelman is joined here by the Matthew Shipp String Trio, comprised of Matthew Shipp on piano, along with violaist Mat Maneri and bassist William Parker. Perelman and the trio probe, weaving four complex, extended episodes—eleven minutes to twenty-one minutes long. It is chamber jazz, sometimes discordant, sometimes ruminative in an avant-garde jazz way, with a method to its restrained and focused madness.

Ivo Perelman's name on the album cover might bring thoughts of torrential bellowing. His past discography says he can go there. But this is an equality of input quartet. The leader's rantings are concise inside this four-way instrumental mish-mash. Chaos seems close by, but the group's remarkable cohesion holds it back. There is no squabbling. The quartet is on a mission. What is the mission? Uncovering the meaning of life? Some would say—taking a good deal of mystery out of the search—that life has no meaning, that it is the product of the complexities of carbon chemistry. But it is easy to believe that there is more to it than that.

Armageddon Flowers plays out as a cosmic quest, along the lines of John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse, 1966). But it sounds as if it is closer to its goal than Coltrane was in 1966. Shipp is a cosmic kind of guy. His The Cosmic Piano (Cantaloupe Music, 2025) and any number of his earlier Shipp albums—teaming with Perelman or solo or with his own groups—say as much. And if it is a search for the meaning of life, Maneri, with his elastic lines, serves as the master entwiner, tying all the wandering sounds together, providing a sinuous form of gravity, as Parker supplies the heartbeat and the band gels up into a singular organism.

Revelations? Maybe. Listen closely.

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