Ivo Perelman: Book of Sound

The mighty tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman leads a team of frequent collaborators and superior craftsmen, pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker. Drawing on past endeavors in various settings, the trio's remarkably intuitive powers are inherent throughout. With movements that are the cogs in the wheel of instantaneous forays in composition, they navigate through broad vistas amid customary mimicking and contrapuntal maneuvers.

Moreover, Perelman keenly incorporates bluesy interludes, heightened by his plaintive cries, and when he mirrors human voice characteristics as a storytelling mechanism. But the group's multifarious inventions transmit a sense of elasticity, often intertwined with firmly rooted structural components via micro-motifs that synthesize into a given piece.

The final and lengthiest track "Veritas Vos Liberabit," teems with intersecting motifs, concise phrasings and playful digressions. The artists' telepathic interplay is locked in tenth gear. Perelman even tosses in some husky barrelhouse phrasings, reminiscent of tenor sax pioneer Coleman Hawkins, although the primary impetus is securely latched in the avant-garde spectrum. At times, the trio revs the engine and cycles through numerous pulses. Shipp's rolling chord patterns and complementing mosaics add a wavering flow in spots. Yet Parker's somber arco-bass lines generate notions of lament as the band switches gears, featuring the bassist's duo breakout with Perelman. They slowly raise the intensity, where the saxophonist bores through these choruses with upper-register bravado, segueing to closeout. Hence, another milestone in Perelman's already extensive discography.

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