Who else is ready to get irreversibly entangled once again? Modern free jazz greats Irreversible Entanglements — vocalist Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and drummer Tcheser Holmes — are back with news of their fifth album, Future Present Past. It's dropping next month, once again via the legendary jazz label Impulse!, and the band returned to New Jersey's famed Van Gelder Studio to record it. IE's frequent collaborator MOTHERBOARD is all over the tracklist, and Helado Negro guests on the first and last tracks, which appear to be connected. (They're called "Juntos Vencemos" and "We Overcome" — the same sentiment in Spanish and English.)
Irreversible Entanglements offered this statement about the new LP:
The weight of a certain world can feel cruel and unusual. Another world uplifts. We form as five and transform into billions. Billions of us on this planet sharing this journey through existence—futures full of possibility and potential, the present with all its anxieties and uncertainties, pasts as wellsprings of ancestral wisdom and histories’ warnings.
This album is five standing on the shoulders of legions. The healers, the alchemists, the rebels, the mothers and fathers who have fought and weaved and invented new ways of being, seeing, and balancing the frequencies of this planet towards trans-dimensional liberation and universal understanding.
We assume our role in this music as messengers, continuing in the tradition’s long march along the arc of the universe. Freedom fighters telling us not to lose our heads amidst imposed chaos. It is our duty to vibrate higher, beyond the noise, above the hype, away from the novelty, over the walls, across the borders: to keep going.
The spirit moves us to sing these fight songs, to sing fight songs, we overcome. To hold on, to keep going, together we overcome.
Today we're privy to two tracks, "Don’t Lose Your Head" and "Vibrate Higher," both of which feature MOTHERBOARD. The former is swinging from the start, punctuated by a bellowed melodic chorus, "Don't lose your head/ Messing with the gods." The latter builds from calm to chaos, eventually evoking a stressful day on a bustling city block. Hear both below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Juntos Vencemos" (Feat. Helado Negro)
02 "Don't Lose Your Head" (Feat. MOTHERBOARD)
03 "Vibrate Higher" (Feat. MOTHERBOARD)
04 "Panamanian Fight Song"
05 "We Know" (Feat. MOTHERBOARD)
06 "Hold On" (Feat. MOTHERBOARD)
07 "Keep Going" (Feat. MOTHERBOARD)
08 "The Messenger"
09 "The Spirit Moves"
10 "We Overcome" (Feat. Helado Negro)
Future Present Past is out 3/27 via Impulse! Pre-order it here.
