Potentially Interesting Jazz Music
Potentially Interesting Jazz Music is the third studio album by Melbourne improvising unit I Hold the Lion’s Paw (IHTLP), following on from Abstract Playgrounds (2018), and Lost in Place (2021). (There has been a steady trickle of singles, Eps, live albums, bootlegs in between, but that’s another story). Three albums, seven years, it points to a measured and considered output. Clearly, no-one’s rushing the end zone here.
In previous incarnations, IHTLP was a loose, free-floating ensemble, drawing on a rotating cast of musicians, the exact number never fixed. It merely expanded, or warped as needed. The ensemble’s ever-changing palette was simply at the beck and call of trumpeter Reuben Lewis’s foundational vision, emphasising elasticity, and malleability. The upshot was a music that constantly morphed, a psychedelic hubbub of shape-shifting sounds, stretched or compressed at will, woven into endlessly mutating patterns, constantly evolving.
That was then, this is now. In recent years, IHTLP has bedded itself into a stable quartet: Reuben Lewis, Emily Bennett, Adam Halliwell, Ronny Ferella. But there is nothing stable about this new manifestation, it’s as bold and capricious as ever, forward-thinking and forward-looking. At the same time, IHTLP continues to draw nourishment from the radical past, cherry-picking and re-purposing scraps and slivers from a rag bag of forebears: Ornette, Don Cherry, Miles, Sun Ra, Laurie Anderson, Jon Hassell.
But here the palette has undergone a subtle shift, marked by an expanded use of electronics and synths, spoken word, voice. Added to which, a propensity for murky undercurrents, abrupt jump cuts, concentrated layering, coupled with a sustained urgency. It’s right there at the outset, on ‘Level Check / Voodoo’, when guest artist, poet Tariro Mavondo recites have you ever tensed your jaw so tight, held your breath so long, because you believe you didn’t deserve the blessing knocking at your ribcage to be let in… These words, intoned breathlessly, presage an untrammelled, five-minute, stream-of-consciousness ride, underscored by a subliminal electronic pulse, as resolute – and unsettling – as a heartbeat in overdrive. Tariro’s poem leaps from idea to idea, variously landing on fear, teeth, genocide, the sacred, unfolding like a grim warning, a countdown to midnight, flush with disquiet and dread.
One thing that is beyond doubt: this quartet version of IHTLP is tight, the upshot of hours spent playing together, improvising, building trust, developing synchronicity, mapping a shared vision. It reflects the band’s readiness for the hard grind, paired with IHTLP’s investigations into durational performance: the daily, four-hour provocations at Mona Foma in 2023, or the recent nation-wide interactive concerts, a cross between Play-School and Café Voltaire, played before an audience of kids via the Musica Viva Australia in Schools Program. Those same kids’ voices can be heard on the intro to ‘Prime Time’, infectiously chanting I hold the lion’s paw before Halliwell’s bass groove kicks in, launching seven-minutes of Lewis’s spaced-out, trippy trumpet, meted out Bennett’s over weirded-out synths, and Ferella’s metronomic beats.
Emily Bennett steps to the fore on the brief ‘Thank You’, her repetitive chant, interspersed with nonsensical phrases – I’ll have what she’s having; Oh honey it’s too cold – declared in mock Strine over a backdrop of percussion and bass. It acts like a teaser for ‘Mechanical Ghosts’, a piece fashioned from sporadic electronics, drums, and slow-burn, eerie trumpet, conjuring darkened landscapes, dreams and chimeras.
Then comes the title track, ‘Potentially Interesting Jazz Music’. What are we to make of it? Tongue planted firmly in cheek? Taking the piss? Or adopting a square-facing stance on where this music might be headed? Whichever way we dice it, it’s five-minutes of irresistible groove, with Lewis’s trumpet gliding across deep bass, bells and chimes, a maelstrom of swirling sound. There’s an undertow of urgency, a slow build-up, with Halliwell and Ferella dovetailing in closely, generating a drum n’ bass vibe. It drifts and flows for five-minutes, Lewis’s trumpet swelling and surging, as if sailing into the eye of a storm, before dissipating and dissolving amid Bennett’s whirling synths.
‘Leave’ re-sets the dial, nudging Nu-Soul terrain, aided by Emily Bennett’s synth-inflected vocals, set to cruise-control through a field of electronics and beats. Melodious and seductive, it hints at late-nights, chequered dance floors, swaying bodies. But in toying with the familiar, IHTLP displays an appetite for interrogating obvious tropes, a sure sign that, for this band, the genre-door remains mutable and wide-open. Next up is ‘Progressive Opposition’, which highlights Adam Halliwell’s eye-popping multi-instrumentalism, his double neck guitar, bass, and 12-string guitar generating mesmeric, repetitive vamps, laying down a golden sheen over which Lewis tentatively improvises, clearing a path for Halliwell’s hypnagogic flute, which floats, dream-like, through a cloud of electronic feed, and stream-lined percussion.
‘Big Bois’ throws a curve ball, with Bennett’s bouncy utterances parsing the title phrase via a series of loops, and repetitions, her voice skating over a bedrock of electronics and percussion, seemingly lopsided, and off-kilter. It’s as if everything is being put through a blender. Lewis’s isolated trumpet blasts, along with preternatural synths, fuse with Bennett’s chants, even as her phrases progressively collapse into meaningless chatter, nonsense syllables, broken language.
The album culminates with ‘When the Earth and Sky Conspired’, bolstered by guest Michelle Nicolle’s soaring vocals, which elevate this gospel-tinged piece. Nicolle’s voice is electrifying, galvanized by Ferella’s strident and furious drumming. There are shades of Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, but equally there is beauty and frailty, an ascendant spirit buoyed by Lewis’s intense and affective trumpet. Featuring Emily Bennett’s lyrics and vocal arrangements, the piece serves as a searing, rending finale to a record that casts a wide shadow, the offshoot of a dedicated, exploratory, and experimental code that knows few bounds.
Is there a word for a band’s third album? We routinely say ‘debut’, ‘sophomore’, but what of third time round? Potentially Interesting Jazz Music is IHTLP MARK III, revealing a quartet that refuses to rest on its laurels.
If IHTLP was founded upon Reuben Lewis’s eclectic musical vision, then this current incarnation adopts a more democratic approach, one foregrounded in each member’s contributions, philosophy, input. Rather than the loose, extended improvisations of previous albums, these nine tracks, all group efforts, suggest, on the surface, a newly discovered delight in brevity, a subtle transition to song structures. The reality is somewhat different: this music was cleaved from a seven-hour marathon session, before being manipulated, collaged, massaged in post-production, broken down into constituent parts, then carefully crafted and reassembled in the studio.
When it comes to IHTLP, things are rarely as they appear. Potentially Interesting Jazz Music reflects an improvising ensemble perpetually re-inventing and replenishing itself, pursuing a forward momentum nourished by open ears, boundless curiosity, technical prowess, musical synergies, unbridled faith. Few bands, in my experience, get to stake such claims.
Credits
I Hold the Lion’s Paw are:
Reuben Lewis - trumpet, synthesisers, pedals
Emily Bennett - voice, synthesisers, lyrics, vocal compositions
Adam Halliwell - bass guitar, guitar, double neck guitar, 12-string guitar, flute, voice
Ronny Ferella - drums, voice
Special guests:
Tariro Mavondo - poetry (Level Check // Voodoo)
Michelle Nicolle - voice (When the Earth and Sky Conspired)
Emily Bennett, Georgia Brooks, Merinda Dias-Jayasinha, Cheryl Durongpisitkul, Ronny Ferella, Isaac Gunnoo, Stephen Hornby and Adam Halliwell - Choir (When the Earth and Sky Conspired)
Produced by Reuben Lewis and I Hold the Lion’s Paw
Engineered by Myles Mumford at Rolling Stock Recording Rooms 2021 and by Reuben Lewis in Rezza 2023-2024
Mixed by Reuben Lewis
Mastered by Helmut Erler
Photography by Duncographic
Dedicated to Joan and Mavis
