Lopez Trio - Live At Roulette [Relative Pitch Records]

Released via Relative Pitch Records on August 27th, 2k21 is "Live At Roulette", the new, roughly 51 minutes spanning album by the FreeJazz- / Free Improv-leaning three piece outfit that is the Brandon Lopez led Lopez Trio which is accompanied by guest performances of Cecilia Lopez. Recorded live at Brooklyn's Roulette Intermedium venue the longplay outing comes at us with titles like "March, Motherfuck", "Dance, Motherfuck" or the great interplay of words that is "My Heart Is In The US Fall Apart" which already speak volumes of the innate, yet well suppressed anger to be expected in the music presented even before one might have listened to the very first seconds of the album. And there it is, starting out with thundering drums and shrieking, off kilter and somewhat Delta-leaning sax lines of a certain melancholia before moving forward into stripped down, muffled and fever'ish rhythmic territories or more plangent Delta Blues-references whilst bits like "Time Is Up Or Lite Jazz Patina" are weighing in a more nightly, inward-looking take on Jazz / Future Jazz abstractions, "Born Slumming It" turns out to be dense, hell'ish and highly intense doomed Jazz without being DoomJazz at all whereas the concluding cut "Motherfuck, I Said Dance" rolls out an intricate structure of corresponding rolls and polyrhythms for a closing which, in their ever growing intensity, could be the soundtrack for some dark rituals. Quite an intense album to review at 1030 am in the morning after a night out.

Album artwork on Instagram!