The Telepathic Band: Telepathic Mysteries, Vol. 1

For a quintet grounded in free association, The Telepathic Band sure as hell sound like a disembodied orchestra tuning up to go rogue. Wafting from absolute to adagio a piacere (as they say in Italian or, as we say in our less romantic and crasser Anglo tongue, as they please), the seemingly indefatigable saxophonist Daniel Carter heads his fellow downtown free music legends, clarinetist Patrick Holmes, keyboardist Matthew Putman, bassist Hilliard Greene and drummer Federico Ughi through five broadly defined little symphonies without anchor or ballast.

At just under fourteen minutes, "Nun Zero" places you immediately in the great chamber room, caught up in the music's airy sweep, and for the next forty minutes Telepathic Mysteries, Vol. 1 holds you in its hypnotic embrace. Putnam's piano is particularly grand in stature, his ringtones lending even more buoyancy to Carter and Holmes delicate duet. They converse, they plead, they laugh and shift without shadow into "SignGhost Theater" accompanied by Ughi's rumbling, rolling tide.

Ughi and Greene's pervasive tonalities center "While You Snap," but it's an elusive center to say the least, and its snap ending acutely clears the way for "S-Cape Cinemagic," a suite of wandering themes that coalesce and disperse, subvert and embellish with a real time grace and magic that one would rightfully suspect, given the turmoil of our real time, wasn't possible anymore. But as this quintet has proven on such previous clouds of logic as Electric Telepathy, Vol. 1 (577 Records, 2019), Telepathia Liquida (577 Records, 2018), and Telepathic Alliances (577 Records, 2017), imaginatively sustained higher communication within the human realm is truly, and vitally, important.

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