Kevin Sun: The Depths of Memory

Saxophonist/composer Kevin Sun's 2 CD set, The Depths Of Memory, is said to be more suited to focused listening than to the "convivial distractions of a jazz club." That rings true. From CD 1's opener, "All This Stillness," subdivided into seven sections, the album finds the saxophonist and his bandmates sounding as if they have slipped into a flow. Sun says he wanted the feeling of "being swept along in a current of musical thought over a period of time." Current and flow suggest movement. A river, the wind. This music's forward momentum seems—as with a river—contained by the levees or dense riparian tangles or sandbanks on its borders, but the water (the music) still makes its meandering journey, riding along on the path of least resistance.

But wind wafting down a narrow corridor may, in certain segments, serve as a more accurate metaphor. A dry Santa Ana wind puffing down an old neighborhood alleyway, a dry leaf (Sun's saxophone; or Adam O'Farrill's trumpet) lifted and pushed by the movement of parched air (for Sun's saxophone tone is a dry one) bouncing off of old rusted cars sitting up on cinder blocks, abandoned bicycles missing front wheels, a corroded dumpster, a jutting and weathered portion of old wooden fence, a wind chime hanging in an avocado tree in one of the back yards (Dana Saul's piano) tinkling gently.

This accessible but free music is not a torrent or a howling gale; it is more a placid passing of time, a following of the flow of moving molecules on their unpredictable paths toward the inevitable—Ornette Coleman minus the freneticism, with more focus.

Like Sun's earlier double CD outing, The Sustain Of Memory (Endectomorph, 2019), The Depths Of Memory is two horns and a rhythm section, but it is an ambitious work. Getting a handle on it takes some deep listening that is well-rewarded. Simple on its surface, with depths revealed to those who do the immersion, those who allow themselves to drift down the alley or ride the river's flow.