Label: Pi Recordings, 2025

Personnel - Steve Lehman: alto saxophone; Vijay Iyer: piano, Fender Rhodes; Tyshawn Sorey: drums.

Fieldwork, a hard-charging contemporary jazz trio of ingenious, top-tier musicians, improvisers, and bandleaders, returns with its fourth album. Alto saxophonist Steve Lehman dazzles with tidal attacks that shift in and out of focus; pianist Vijay Iyer sculpts into the open field with vaulting textures and patterns in his deep-focus comping; and drummer Tyshawn Sorey powers the music forward like a rhythmic engine, keeping everything on the edge.

Iyer’s “Propaganda” opens with raw inspiration, driven by the tart angularity of fragmented saxophone lines and propelled by intricate, accelerated drum work. The piano’s agility shines across registers. Also penned by Iyer, “Evening Rite” thrives with buoyant gaiety and a magnetic pulse, while “Fire City” brims with feral lyricism and saturated sound, its bittersweet dissonances ultimately resolving into melodic consonance.

Each piece rivets, with the trio pouring sweat-filled, bruising passion into music that disrupts traditional jazz forms. Perplexing mathematical tangles surface in Lehman’s “Embracing Difference”, where the saxist works closely with Iyer while Sorey grooves with rampant impulsivity. Odd meters and hectic lines create a sound at once pugilistic and balletic. “Domain” follows enigmatic paths of cinematic grandeur, with Lehman soaring into the upper register with laser-like precision over fertile, odd-metered terrain.

Iyer adds Rhodes on two selections: Lehman’s “Fantóme”, which tests the trio’s improvisational powers, and his own “The Night Before”, a rare reprieve from cathartic intensity—melodic, harmonically radiant, and ballad-adjacent. Between them sits the high-wire “Thereupon”, where shifting meters and speed variations play a central role.

Fieldwork’s advanced musical language continues to carve out a singular path of boundless creativity. Probing the enigmatic edges of groove, their inventive oddities reward close listening, where febrile detail emerges at every turn. Like its predecessors, Thereupon is a must-have.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Propaganda ► 02 - Embracing Difference ► 05 - Domain

Steve Lehman: alto saxophone; Gaston Bandimic: vocals; HPrizm: vocals; Maciek Lasserre: soprano saxophone; Carlos Homs: piano, keyboards; Drew Gress: acoustic bass; Damion Reid: drums.

The remarkable alto saxophonist Steve Lehman is always immersed in interesting projects, whether under his own name or working as a sideman.
Last year he delighted us with “Mise en Abime”, recorded with his first-class octet, and did a great job in Liberty Ellman’s “Radiate”. Now he embraces a different adventure, holding on a septet that fuses modern jazz and underground hip-hop. This wasn’t really a surprise for me, since in 2005, Lehman had incurred into more explorative beats, electronics, and turntables in “Demian as a Posthuman”.
For the Sélébeyone project, he teams up with the rappers Gaston Bandimic and HPrizm, who sing in Wolof and English, respectively, and also with the soprano saxophonist Maciek Lasserre, who composed four of the nine tunes. The rhythm section, so fundamental in this urban environment, was entrusted to jazz diggers such as the surprising keyboardist Carlos Holms, who worked with Peter Evans in “Ghosts”, the exemplary bassist Drew Gress, and the exciting drummer, Damion Reid.
“Laamb” opens with a confident attitude, drawing a relentless hip-hop groove decorated with a piano ostinato. The cadenced lyrics are uttered in two different languages while Lehman improvises in his precise, twitchy style.
Both Lehman and Lasserre intercalate their sounds in “Are You in Peace?”, first in unison and then splitting up for another jolt by the altoist. Holms injects keyboard eerie sounds at some point while Gress and Reid remain irreproachable in their drive. This incredible synchronization continues to stand out in tunes such as “Origine”, which causes apprehension through the keyboard effects, and “Cognition”, where Lehman leads the way by throwing in numerous questions and exclamations, pushing Lasserre to the conversation.
Balanced and well produced, "Sélébeyone" opens different horizons for both hip-hop and improvised jazz.

Favorite Tracks:
02 – Are You in Peace? ► 04 – Origine ► 05 – Cognitio