Phil Haynes / Ben Monder: Transition (s)

The call of the electric guitar has enticed drummer Phil Haynes to revisit his early passion for the instrument. Two albums have resulted: Return to Electric (review here), and now Transition (s), both on Corner Store Records. The former is a trio album that has Haynes teamed with guitarist Steve Salerno and bassist Drew Gress, the latter, the disc at hand, has the veteran drummer joined in a duo set with guitarist Ben Monder.

Haynes pulled up roots in 1993, moving to central Pennsylvania from New York City. But in his early days before the move, he and Ben Monder enjoyed sporadic duet jam sessions in which they dug deeply into John Coltrane's tune "Transition," from the saxophonist's 1970 album (recorded in 1965) of the same name. "Blowing our minds and souls out over [it]" is how Haynes describes the experience. On the 2025 Haynes/Monder sessions, they do the same.

Coltrane's Transition (Impulse, 1970), recorded in 1965, represented his move from the blues-based and straight-ahead jazz approach to a freer form of expression. It was recorded just before his cacophonous and some might say chaotic Ascension (Impulse!, 1966), an album that—along with Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz (Atlantic, 1961)—blew the roof off of expectations for jazz records.

Haynes Transition (s) does not reach—or aspire to—the Ascension level of calamity. It has its tender, pensive moments in "Untitled Ones" and elsewhere. But it is free. The opener, "Ben I" features the guitarist sounding as if he is playing in an ice cave on a moon the size of Mercury that is circling a cold planet as far away from its star as Neptune is from our sun, while on "Untitled" Haynes makes the rustling of a small feral life form that lives and outside the mouth of that cave.

The title piece is one of those wailing, turn-up-the-volume tunes, full of raging Coltrane-ian spirituality, where God is one intense dude.

Amidst all this dark shimmer of the atmospheric mood pieces and the muscular guitar attacks, it is surprising to hear the Great American Songbook tune, "I Fall In Love Too Easily." The song is played straight, radiating the ice cave resonance with surreal undertones. That moon with the ice cave must have a dense, near-liquid atmosphere despite a mass that should not be able to hold one. A place where sound just sounds different.