A longtime member of saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell's ensembles, drummer Tani Tabbal is a boundary-pushing musician whose sound draws from forward-thinking artists like Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, and Sun Ra. All three of those performers come to mind when listening to Tabbal's sixth solo album, 2020's Now Then. In fact, Tabbal played with Sun Ra's Arkestra early in his career, and he brings that group's maverick, interstellar energy to his work with his trio with alto saxophonist Adam Siegel and bassist Michael Bisio. Siegel, the youngest of the three, is a kinetic player with a wiry, probing sound informed by the aforementioned Coleman, as well as nods to Lennie Tristano. He's joined by Bisio, a Seattle stalwart with deep roots in the avant-garde scene having played with luminaries like Matthew Shipp, Whit Dickey, and Joe McPhee. Together, Tabbal and his bandmates bring all of their like-minded experience to bear on music that threads the needle between compositional chamber jazz and free group improvisation. Cuts like the opening "Arrested Confusion" and the title track are particularly Coleman-esque, with Tabbal's driving percussion and Bisio's measured bass riff pushing Siegel towards ever-edgier harmonies. Similarly, on "Sun History Ra Mystery," the trio draw upon Tabbal's time as a member of Ra's Arkestra, as Siegel sprinkles layers of extraterrestrial tonal mist over Tabbal and Bisio's slowly churning rhythmic moonscape. Other tracks have titles that wryly describe the sounds at play, as on the onomatopoeia of "Scrunch," in which the trio sound like they are being extruded through a small tube. Equally evocative is "Just Woke Up," in which Siegel's stuttering, bleary-eyed phrasing evokes the feeling of being slowly awakened by the sound of a bird. We also get the animated, Carl Stalling-esque "Inky Bud," and the languid harmonic shadows of the ballad "r. henri." With Now Then, Tabbal and his trio play with the intensity and radical creativity of a much larger ensemble. ~ Matt Collar, Rovi

1		Arrested Confusion
2		Just Woke Up
3		Khusenaton
4		Sun History Ra Mystery
5		Now Then
6		Midway Open
7		Oh See OC Revisited
8		Scrunch
9		r. henri
10		Inky Bud
11		Digital Booklet: Now Then

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