Stephen Davis Unit: The Gleaming World

Belfast-based drummer-percussionist Stephen Davis' debut album for 577 Records takes its name from a line in a Seamus Heaney poem. The Irish Nobel laureate drew deeply on his rural surroundings, and, as these song titles suggest, so too has Davis. In late 2023, Davis spent time as a musician-in-residence at The Courthouse, Tinahely, in County Wicklow—an Improvised Music Company scheme that provides musicians with the support, time and space necessary to follow their artistic muse. Davis tapped into the natural wonder, mystery and myths of Wicklow's forests and mountains, a landscape that sparked the creation of these eight absorbing originals.

Davis' multi-layered compositions balance through-composed melodic and harmonic lines (carried chiefly by alto saxophonist Angelika Niescier and tenor saxophonist Tom Challenger) and intense rhythmic drive (courtesy of Davis, pianist Alexander Hawkins and double bassist Nick Dunston), with highly charged soloing. Ripples from the stones cast on jazz's waters by Sun Ra, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane occasionally make themselves felt in music that is in turn stormy, lyrical and gently keening. The abiding impression, however, is of personally wrought contemporary music for the 21st century.

Much of the music's excitement is generated by the ensemble's terrific rhythmic churn. Like the pistons, levers and wheels of some wondrous mechanical device, Davis, Dunston and Hawkins are both independently assured in their bustling enterprise—muscular and exclamative—and intricately bound in fluid dialogs that veer between brash and tender. They provide the most vibrant of springboards for Niescer and Challenger, who clearly relish the not infrequent opportunities to tear at the leash.

A single piano note hammered mercilessly on "Deer Antler Spray" creates a hypnotic pull akin to a shamanistic chant whose curious spell the orgiastic horns cannot diminish. Dunston's potent ostinato and thrumming attack on the celebratory "Whale Song" likewise create a powerful forward momentum. Then there is the leader, nuanced and sotto voce on one hand, effervescent and cajoling on the other, his brushes gently fanning the embers, his agile stick-work fueling the fire—according to the music's needs. Little wonder that Anthony Braxton came calling on the Bangor man's services.

Musical fires rage thrillingly on the kinetic title track and in the spirited free jazz of "Sun Ghost." There is space, too, for brooding meditation on "Sugar Loaf Mountain"—where legato horn phrasing and pulsing rhythms dovetail in a slow dance macabre—and for simmering, Coltrane-esque incantation on "Tree." This latter, the album's closing track, seems to dissipate rather abruptly, almost as if the tape had run out. And in an ensemble of fiery appetites, Hawkins' piano could perhaps have been higher in the mix, especially on a brace of solos where his trademark percussive intensity sounds oddly diluted.

The Gleaming World was unveiled to an ecstatic reception at Moving On Music's Brilliant Corners festival in March 2024. As hindsight makes clear, no amount of studio tinkering could faithfully render the visceral impact of this music in a live setting. Still, this is a vital, frequently thrilling calling card from an explosive quintet, whose leader serves compelling notice of his credentials as a composer and bandleader of some distinction.

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