Hybrid Vigour - The Wire

"From Chris Williams and Lester St Louis in the US, to Pat Thomas and XT in the UK, improvised music is plugging in, literally and figuratively, to electronic currents from the club to conservatory. Cross-genre experiments have been happening for decades, but this is something new, going beyond fusion or hybridity. We're seeing musicians with knowledge of multiple idioms taking real risks by exploding hierarchies between genres, performing in different spaces and correcting imperialist narratives."

"In January 2025, I was blown away by Ambrose Akinmusire's Honey From A Winter Stone. I'd dug the trumpeter-composer's 2018 album Origami Harvest, where his jazz ensemble played off Kool AD's rhymes and Mivos Quartet's strings, but this was on another level. Its constituent elements - Akinmusire's exploratory trumpet, vocalist Kokayi's freewheeling reflections on Black male identity, Sam Harris's elegant piano, chiquitamagic's synth colours and grooves, Justin Brown's intricate drumming, Mivos's new music textures - are fully integrated into a visionary whole."

"Yet as hiphop has got noisier and more psychedelic, the possibilities for improvisors have opened right up. Embracing this are WRENS, the quartet of Ryan Easter on trumpet and vocals, Elias Stemeseder on synths and una corda piano, Lester St Louis on cello and electronics, and Jason Nazary on drums and synths. Their album Half Of What You See moves freely from deconstructed rhythms and percolating funk to beatless atmospherics, as acoustic extended techniques meld seamlessly with woozy electronics."

Improvised music is increasingly integrating electronic club currents and conservatory practices across the US and UK. Musicians are combining jazz, hip-hop, new-music ensembles and electronic production to create fully integrated, cross-idiom works. Ambrose Akinmusire's Honey From A Winter Stone exemplifies this integration, uniting exploratory trumpet, vocals addressing Black male identity, piano, synth colours, intricate drumming and new-music textures. Hiphop's noisier, more psychedelic directions have expanded improvisational possibilities. Projects like WRENS blur acoustic extended techniques with woozy electronics and blurred boundaries between live playing, processing and production, moving between deconstructed rhythms, funk and beatless atmospheres.

Read at The Wire Magazine - Adventures In Modern Music