Ivo Perelman / Mark Hellias / Tom Rainey Truth Seeker: Truth Seeker

Saxophonist Ivo Perelman has a very deep understanding of time and space. He knows deep down these things, these oddly elusive concepts that bind us to the irreparable now, are truly meant to serve as agents of creation, of freedom. Of the freedom to create without corruption. He also senses on the most granular level that creation is a minute-by-minute thing. Or it should be.

On his umpteenth release of the new year, Perelman, in studio for the first time with fellow music dementors, bassist Mark Helias (Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor and drummer Tom Rainey (Mary Halvorson, Tim Berne, his wife Ingrid Laubrock) lock horns and reciprocate, call, respond, and dare. They strive.

Anything but calculated, Truth Seeker works from the fringes, fermenting like a wildfire towards a center. Far-flung potentialities traipse and trapeze brashly. Then sonorously. They back step and step to the fore. Titles like "Truth Seeker," "Devotion," " Intuition," and "Mystical Vibration" are not necessarily meant to freeze any one singular composition into consciousness. They are meant more as markers in the through line of the process.

Free jazz rarely gets more personal than this and on "Spiritual Growth" Perelman blows some critical John Coltrane. Crying a fearless spirituality, the saxophonist screeches, searches, seethes and pleads for something to fall from the sky and lift us from the shackles. Helias and Rainey respond in kind, colliding resoundingly into a full-blown blowout that is as soul-inspired as it is soul-invigorating.

A backlit stroll down a moonless street could and may very well be the setting for "Ubiquitous Light," a bluesy reprieve after the wrath and fury of "Spiritual Growth." A bantering moment of recall and ransack wherein each component of the trio takes to the fore and recedes. It is a moment of cooperation rarely experienced in today's uncivil surroundings. So too are the antics of "Life's Meaning." Such is the whole of Truth Seeker.

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