Vijay Iyer has captured the ears of critics and listeners like only a handful of the most elite jazz pianists since McCoy Tyner, Cecil Taylor, or Misha Mengelberg initially burst onto the scene. There's no other single player who sounds even remotely like him, few who can match his inventive and whimsical sense of play or seriousness, and absolutely nobody who presents the stunning, highly intelligent music he dishes out. With Historicity, he touches on many different levels of acumen, influenced by contemporary alternative rock, Motown, show tunes, pop fusion, the early creative music of the '70s, and ethnic strains. Iyer also revisits two of his older compositions, with the majority of this progressive jazz -- whether "covers" or originals -- done completely in his own scintillating style. Iyer's working/touring band of drummer Marcus Gilmore and bassist Stephan Crump is more than up to the task, with this well-rehearsed music retaining a spontaneous, liquid, chameleonic urgency that consistently staggers the imagination. Iyer's mind-blowing virtuosity on the title track/opener is loaded with mutated repeat phrases that tumble from his brilliant, busy hands. Clearly, he is not like all the others. His love for Andrew Hill is demonstrated during Smoke Stack, a scattershot, inventive, tangential swinger, while Julius Hemphill's deeply bluesy and tribal Dogon A.D. is perfectly interpreted in its thorny, craggy, unpredictable rhythmic base, as Crump's bowed bass and Gilmore's juggernaut funk stagger the mixed meters, very faithful to the original.

1		Historicity
2		Somewhere
3		Galang [Trio Riot Version]
4		Helix
5		Smoke Stack
6		Big Brother
7		Dogon A.D.
8		Mystic Brew
9		Trident: 2010
10		Segment for Sentiment #2