Chicago Underground Duo: Hyperglyph

International Anthem is a fitting home for the first Chicago Underground Duo album after an 11-year hiatus. The Chicago-based and buzzworthy label has carried the torch for avant-garde sounds in the city since 2014, and trumpeter and composer Rob Mazurek and drummer Chad Taylor are no strangers to the label's catalog, performing together on multiple IARC releases. International Anthem is in many ways the progeny of a jazz and post-rock influenced sound pioneered by Chicago vets Tortoise (another recent addition to the label's roster) and Mazurek's Isotope 217.

Hyperglyph opens with "Click Song," built on rolling synth bass and pulsing drums, wobbly in a trunk rattling sort of way, and fuzzed out trumpet—as bold an opening statement as an album can have. From the jump, Mazurek and Taylor remind listeners that they have been doing this for decades, setting the tone for the album to come.

Taylor stays busy on the album's title track, as his tom work dances with indigenous drums, bells, and layered vocal chants, a pitch- shifted trumpet references NOLA brass bands. Snakey flutes take listeners tripping through jungles. Throughout Hyperglyph, Taylor is in his bag, working his drums with polyrhythmic fury.

"Rhythm Cloth" touches on UK drum and bass, a genre that itself draws on rhythms from Nigeria, Mali, Zimbabwe and Ghana drum patterns that Taylor notes were an influence on Hypherglyph. "Contents of Your Heavenly Body" likewise finds Taylor dancing in the electro- cosmic rhythms of Autechre and Amon Tobin, while Mazurek alternates between his horn and spoken word.

"The Gathering" begins dirge-like and dramatic, in a silent way in a digital age, before abruptly changing course as a childlike melody emerges from the decay. Miles Davis, and Teo Macero's groundbreaking cut-and-paste production is a guiding star throughout Hyperglyph, as the duo utilizes IARC HQ in Chicago as a base for sonic exploration. The title track itself finds Mazurek playing the RMI electric piano, a centerpiece of Davis' groundbreaking Filles de Kilimanjaro (Columbia Records, 1968).

"Egyptian Suite" is the album's centerpiece, presented in three parts. North African horn lines weave through dizzying drum patterns on "The Architect." Taylor pulls distorted cries from his cymbals on "Triangulation," as the duo explores the darker edges of the subconscious. "Architectonics" is Taylor at his most ferocious, Mazuerk's trumpet punctuating their frenzied dialogue.

Closing the album is "Succulent Amber," a psychedelic journey akin to Carlos Niños' introspections, more Eno meets Budd than Cherry meets Blackwell.

The latest album from Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor is every bit the blueprint for the jazz meets post-rock meets electronica hybridization the duo have perfected over eight studio albums.

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