Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes 
The past couple of years have seen a flurry of activity out of the members of Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet. Much like their noisier counterparts in Bill Orcutt’s guitar quartet, the band is more than just the sum of its parts, and the members in Parker’s orbit have all found fertile ground with boundary expanding releases over the past couple of years. Following solo works by Josh Johnson and Anna Butterss and the excellent debut from SML, the latest tangential release finds Gregory Uhlmann (SML, Anna Butterss, Perfume Genius), Josh Johnson (SML, Jeff Parker ETA IVtet & Anna Butterss, Leon Bridges), and Sam Wilkes (Sam Gendel, Chaka Khan) assembling into a trio for a new record that feels like a kindred spirit to SML’s vision of rhythmic freedom. Like Uhlmann and Johnson’s work on Small Medium Large, the trio fuses contorted patterns and bucolic tones. The record draws the listener in and sets them loose within its aural maze, mesmerizing them within its walls of circular siren song.
As with many of the other albums within this group’s orbit, the record began its inception at the Enfield Tennis Academy, the small venue that served as a center for improvisation over the last few years. Much of the work on the new album was brought to fruition within those walls, with additional recording at Uhlmann’s house. The band works together to entwine rhythm and resplendence, letting Wilkes’ bass and Uhlmann’s guitar dance through their fingerpicked forms while Johnson curls around their roots like woodsmoke and pollen caught in the wind. In an unlikely ending, the album culminates in a cover of “The Fool On The Hill,” hardly a jazz standard. But, the band gives the song a new life, ferreting out its dark center and reimagining it in the same way that someone like Dave Easley turned his medley of “In A Silent Way” and “In My Room” into a haunting reminder of the past. Here’s hoping that this ever tessellating group of musicians continues to form and reform over the next few years. The ETA itself may be gone, but the records that are still surfacing remain an enduring legacy.
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