Seismic Shift

Album review

The first-ever trio album from John Escreet, 2022's Seismic Shift captures the pianist in deep interplay with his highly regarded rhythm section partners, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Damion Reid. Born in the U.K., Escreet spent many years living in Brooklyn before relocating to Los Angeles at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was during one of his initial post-pandemic shows in 2021 that he first worked with Revis (a longtime member of Branford Marsalis' band) and Reid (who has played with Robert Glasper, Steve Lehman, and others). All three musicians found common ground, communing over their many years in New York and shared interest in pushing the jazz envelope. It's that push-to-the-edge energy they bring to all of Seismic Shift, with songs that straddle the line between harmonically nuanced post-bop and frenetic, atonal avant-gardism. Aesthetically, Escreet is an intriguing player with a style that bridges the warm sophistication of Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner with the bold free jazz and fist-crashing chords of Cecil Taylor and Thelonious Monk. In the past, he has led groups featuring horn players, including Ambrose Akinmusire (2009's Consequences) and Evan Parker (2013's Sound, Space and Structures). While it's always welcome to hear how engaged he is with another front-line improviser, he's just as compelling on his own, and more importantly with his trio partners here. Both Revis and Reid are titanically gifted players who regularly grab your attention with their boldly delivered accents and swinging flourishes. There's a maverick quality to Seismic Shift that's evident right from the start, as in the opening "Study No. 1," where Escreet pushes you with force, tearing your ears open with dense chords and great blasts of notey runs. More measured is "Equipoise," a dramatic modal piece in the John Coltrane tradition. Here, Escreet pours shards of linear broken-glass notes down a deep stairway of fourths against which Revis and Reid offer woody bellows and tumbling stick rhythms. The trio's tactile give-and-take is redolent throughout, especially on evocatively titled "Digital Tulips," which has the energy of a 1940s bebop track being remixed in real time by a DJ. The title song is yet more evocative, conjuring haunted house imagery as Escreet's prepared piano technique of plucked strings and dampened keys gives way to Revis' mournful bowed bass and Reid's ghostly cymbal work. Seismic Shift is a gorgeously arresting album, and there's never a moment where you can easily predict where Escreet's trio is going to go next.

© Matt Collar /TiVo