Thoughts of a thin man

On Open the Gates Irreversible Entanglements take us on a trip through space and time via poetry and jazz, Latin and Afro-Caribbean beats, avant-garde free improvisation and other-worldly electronics. It’s an enthralling journey.

A collective of five individuals—poets, musicians and activists—the band came together organically through combined working relationships and friendships. Originally performing together at a Musicians Against Police Brutality event in 2015 they see their mission as contributing to Black liberation through music.

On this, their third album after their eponymous debut and Who Sent You?, the band continue to blend spoken word and free jazz, here adding synths and occasional electronics to their sound. Recorded in a single day, the album ranges in mood across its seven tracks from the short title track driven by the irresistible pulse of drummer Tcheser Holmes and bassist Luke Stewart, to the side-long Water Meditation, on which the band build from quiet reflection to cacophony and back. The rhythm section is joined by trumpet player Aquiles Navarro, sax player Keir Neuringer and the prolific vocalist Camae Ayewa a.k.a. Moor Mother.

While listening to Navarro and Neuringer on Storm Came Twice I’m reminded of the gloriously skewed harmony between Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry on the beautiful classic track Lonely Woman. On Water Meditation the two blow hard while electronic sounds conjure up thunder as that track reaches its peak.

Through it all Ayewa draws the strands together with her spoken words. Open the Gates kicks off with a statement of intent: We arrive, energy time. Universal sound law, not guilty, not doing time, unbound. While the words summon up intense feelings of history, of creation, of the interconnectedness of everything Ayewa grounds it with references to antecedents in jazz history like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday and Nina Simone.

History too of the slave trade is at the heart of The Port Remembers. As the images of Edward Colston’s plunge into the harbour crossed the globe she is inspired to speak of Cotton from America, blood from Bristol.

There’s a real feeling of urgency to this music. As they closed their set at the London Jazz Festival late last year Ayewa gently berated her audience: You gotta wake the fuck up. I know London is full of dead people but some of us are still alive. Listening to this thrilling album will make you feel very much alive.