Wadada Leo Smith: Constellations and Hemispheres

The listener is easily startled by Wadada Leo Smith. The man has an aura about him that emanates from some other place, some other time, when the rule of law was set in stone. A time not too long ago when collective aspiration held us all enthralled. And the man who carried that stone is none other than the trumpeter himself.

Smith's presence also has a mythical essence that, in and of itself, is hardly breaking news. But it is that sense of now that news delivers, breaking or not, that empowers the kick-off "Dark Energy"  —a piece of music so rightly titled and performed—coiling through the hardest memory of when music stood bare. A time when fellow daredevils, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and drummer Marcus Gilmore cut their own paths alongside him, digging to the core of what makes us tick.

Now imagine sounding like the flip side of the music heard in a Ken Burns documentary, and "Lake Tanganyika"—all two minutes and fifty-one seconds of it— serves as the climactic theme ushering in the seething, jaw-dropping "Dark Matter, Particles of Light, Mirror of the Unseen." A mother of a mash-up of the preceding two tracks, "Dark Matter, Particles of Light, Mirror of the Unseen" is an odyssey that finds Courvoisier especially crazed and Gilmore ever ready to outrun her. Blending from said trio to an octet comprised of vibraphonist Bobby Naughton, guitarist Bill Laswell, percussionists Brian Jarawa Gray and Mauro Refosco; bassist Melvin Gibbs, Smith's grandson guitarist Lamar Smith and drummer Pheeroan AkLaff balances intensity and voltage as best they can. Then Smith, his horn at once both vulgar and vulnerable, counsels all. It is massive listening, be assured.

'Tis safe to say that Smith is up to some serious excrement on Constellations And Hemispheres. "Deep Canyon on Mars" cinches it. Crashing through on a duplicitous, grinding crunch-guitar rampage courtesy of the junior Smith—a chip off grandpa's shoulder for sure—"Deep Canyon on Mars" bodes hypnotic and baptismal, serving as the perfect intro to "Meditation on Love." Which it is. Resilient in the face of turmoil and ruckus, "Meditation on Love" is, to which any sworn-to partner will attest, just that. And more.

It takes a lot of guts to embody the political, historical, and societal switchbacks of any day, let alone this exhaustive era, and Smith, with Constellations And Hemispheres, checks all the boxes, then burns the results in ceremony. The skinny behind Constellations And Hemispheres is that the music is born from multiple sessions, rejiggered and re-contextualized, through this day's digital wizardry. That is a very cool factoid indeed, but it is the listen that counts.  Constellations And Hemispheres counts.