Josh Sinton's Predicate Trio: Making Bones, Taking Draughts, Bearing Unstable Millstones Pridefully, Idiotically, Prosaically

Bass clarinetist and baritone saxophonist Josh Sinton (Ideal Bread, Nate Wooley Quintet, Adam Hopkins' Crickets) has always been a tenacious improviser, and with his new trio bridges the gap between post-modernism, raw experimentalism and core jazz fundamentals. Featuring all-universe drummer Tom Rainey and cellist Chris Hoffman—admired for his work with cutting-edge music acolyte Henry Threadgill and other notables—this band dances and darts through undulating improv segments, and tangles with various metrics and structural facets amid a democratic group focus.

The trio is not always in a rush to establish a solid theme. But the artists' close-knit interactions and punctuating dynamics underscore the meticulously and sometimes high-velocity sub-plots. as they morph low-key developments with loosely executed improv insurrections, offbeat cadences and smoldering song-forms. For example, on "Taiga" Hoffman's guttural, sawing lines and Rainey's peppering beats preface the leader's popping and whirling notes, leading to odd-metered detours and supple exchanges, abetted with a bold constitution.

Sinton's angular, gritty and microtonal voicings seemingly border multiple dimensions of time, space and energy. On "Unreliable Mirrors" Hoffman's budding lines power the band into animated narratives as Sinton climbs registers, leading to vocal-like choruses akin to a scat singer as Rainey uses his kit to thrust the trio into a mid-tempo bop vamp towards closeout. Yet "Propulse" finds Sinton toning down his clarinet phrasings to weave a storyline that intimates a degree of uncertainty is in the air. However, the musicians proceed to dish out a whimsical, vacillating and fragmented motif, spanked by the drummer's snappy rim shots and march beats. Nonetheless, the album is fervently recommended for those who for need a jolt of adrenaline and relish a multilateral approach to the jazz vernacular.

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