Anna Butterss 
Feeling every bit like a companion piece to Butterss’ work with SML this year, the songwriter/bassist’s debut for International Anthem is hung on their indomitable rhythm and a sense of exploration. This sense of adventure drives the album and sets it apart from 2022’s Activities, an album that itself pushed jazz boundaries. The songs on Mighty Vertebrate were worked through with a set of prompts, not directly pulled from the Oblique Strategies, but certainly inspired by their methodology of opening up the artistic experience. In that regard songs were built from non-standard settings — time restraints, looping initiatives, utilizing the instrument in unconventional ways — and those circumstances built the bones of the album under Anna’s ear before their partner in the project, co-producer and percussionist, Ben Lumsdaine, began to embellish further.
The record was taken to Big Ego where Ben and Butterss’ SML bandmates Gregory Uhlmann (guitar) and Josh Johnson (saxophone) opened up the compositions and added layers to Anna’s works. Their inclusion retains some of the same soul and circular motion that served SML so well this year, but what it retains most is the band’s sense of instinct. Yet, this is not SML, this is a record with Butterss and their bass at the center. It’s a record that seeks to put the listener into motion and wrack them with rhythm. It feels worlds away from both jazz and electronic composition proper, a record that’s building worlds one track at a time. Groove is at the center and the methods to get there aren’t didactic at all.
On Mighty Vertebrate there’s no set way to get the joints in motion, but as with Anna’s collaborator Jeff Parker (who features on “Dance Steve,” the band’s dynamic is key. Butterss wrote the pieces with Ben, Gregory, and Josh in mind and they’re not so much studio submissive as key elements to the album’s sway. Smoked or singed, slow and sanguine or erratic and ecstatic, the pieces on the album interlock into one of 2024’s most memorable outings, a record that refuses to be pinned by genre or expectation.
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