Original Mind: You Know When It’s Time

It is rather like wine tasting. The trio Original Mind's twelve tracks deliver flavors familiar to adventurous music listeners; Brad Holden's saxophone has hints of Ornette Coleman and Evan Parker, bassist Dick Studer flavors with William Parker, and drummer Steve Hirsh adds notes of Paul Motian. Like great wines, though, those tasting notes are only for the sake of reference and the act of imbibing You Know When It's Time gets better when the music is allowed to breathe.

The three Minnesota natives entered the recording studio without compositions, at the height of the first wave of the global pandemic and, from what is apparent from this session, on a mission to document their musical fellowship, one which is noticeably built upon mutual respect. There is no leader here with each musician providing generous space to the others. While this session is leaderless, it is a combined effort. The patience displayed is priceless. "Paraformal" opens, sounding like a field recording with bowed bass and scraped cymbals which give way to breathy saxophone and a meandering exploration. The trio is in no hurry here. Tracks such as "Extracelestial Softshoe" and "Step Up" display a 'no worries' approach to improvisation. The same applies to the longest track, "Blues'N Go!" which plies a noir-ish slow drag sound which accentuates the trio's blues. Everything they play comes together with no sour notes. Like wine making, they squeeze instead of crushing their musical grapes.