James Brandon Lewis Trio - Eye of I (2023)

Posted By: delpotro

James Brandon Lewis Trio - Eye of I (2023)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+log+.cue) - 289 Mb | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 109 Mb | 00:47:28
Avant-Garde Jazz, Modern Creative, Spiritual Jazz | Label: ANTI- Records

"I come from the generation that went to school to learn music,” says Lewis, a self-described seeker and old soul of thirty-nine who did his undergrad at Howard University in Washington DC and earned his master’s at Cal Arts, where he studied with Charlie Haden and others. “What happens in that environment is everything becomes overly complicated. [After Jesup Wagon] I was aware about how inside my head I tend to get. I started thinking about the importance of breaking out of those thought patterns from school. At this point I have a kind of trained intuition, to know where stuff is supposed to go. I began to challenge that, and the more I did, the more I became obsessed with the basics.”

That sent Lewis on what became a thorough, revitalizing purge of his artistic trick bag. He cut out compositional complexities, focusing instead on earnest, sing-able melodies. He avoided some of the fancy jazz chords. He explored folk song themes like those he played with Mark Ribot on the stirring Songs of Resistance 1942-2018, which brought him to the attention of musicians outside of the jazz realm. (Ribot, a longtime admirer, advocated for ANTI- to sign Lewis, his impassioned message describing Lewis as a keeper of the legacy of John Coltrane: “James Brandon Lewis’ solos are like a jumbo jet – you need to give them plenty of runway space to take off and land.”)

Then Lewis meditated on the instrumental configuration best suited to bringing his new ideas to light. Rather than write for a large group, or even a horn section, he gravitated to a lean, unconventional power trio: Tenor sax, electric cello, and drums.

And he swapped the aesthetic manifestos he’d attached to previous albums (see An Unruly Manifesto) for a simple punk-band-in-the-basement credo: Chasing energy. Above all else.

This process of stripping away led directly to Eye of I, Lewis’ bracing, sometimes haunting, arrestingly diverse Anti Records debut. It’s a record alive with the messy contrasts of life in the United States circa 2022 – dissonant one minute and graceful/prayerful the next; animated by anger and contention as well as the possibility of resolution; holding equal space for expressions of steadfast faith and wild spontaneous skronkage.

“What I’m interested in is the dance,” Lewis says, crediting the longterm mentorship of pianist Matthew Shipp for expanding his awareness of unspoken aspects of musical conversation. “That’s a fundamental dynamic – I take some, you give some, we interact, now we have something, now we can go someplace.” He adds that the Eye of I “power trio” – Chris Hoffman on cello and Max Jaffe on drums – is particularly adept at this give and take: “The first time we played, things just lifted up right away. Everything that group does just feels fresh.”

Eye of I opens with 44 seconds of gritty, high-throttling low-down groove, an ear pulverizing opening designed to cleanse all traces of ordinary from the palette. From there, Lewis offers a prayerful cover of Donnie Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free” and then the first of his disarmingly addictive originals, “The Blues Still Blossoms.”

Though oriented around the primordial flatted-third blues interval, it is more an incantation than a blues. As Lewis explains, he sought to avoid all traces of the blues as understood by academics. “I was thinking about miles of blue fields, that was the visual in my mind. I wanted a blues that sounded like it was floating and never ending. And also new, refreshing. The piece is built on word-like phrasing – I’m not thinking about time at all….It’s like a a breathing walk, or a conversation. It’s blues after a hard day’s work – it has nothing to do with form or hitting the right anything. It’s like “OK, so the work day of “time” is over: Now what do you want to say?”

That tune and the meditative “Within You Are Answers” are notable for their sturdy, broad, declarative themes. These have little in common with intricate maze-like contemporary jazz composition – and that is intentional. Lewis recalls that from his earliest experiences with music growing up in Buffalo New York, he knew, innately, that he had a special aptitude for melody.

“I went to a Performing Arts high school where it was required, from 5th or 6th grade, to be in choir. So I learned to sing, use my voice. That got my ear attentive to melody, and also the emotive quality of music, how a melody can make you feel.” Lewis started to play clarinet at age 9, and remembers learning melodies by ear, from memory. “When that movie Mr. Holland’s Opus came out, I just loved it, and I still remember that melody that clarinetist was trying to learn. I was 12. But I can still sing it – it’s been etched in my mind my whole life.”
Tracklist:
01. Foreground
02. Someday We’ll All Be Free
03. The Blues Still Blossoms
04. Middle Ground
05. Eye of I
06. Within You Are Answers
07. Womb Water
08. Background
09. Send Seraphic Beings
10. Even the Sparrow
11. Fear Not

Exact Audio Copy V1.6 from 23. October 2020

EAC extraction logfile from 14. March 2023, 14:23

James Brandon Lewis Trio / Eye of I

Used drive : HL-DT-STDVDRAM GT50N Adapter: 1 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 103
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Documents\flac-1.3.2-win\flac-1.3.2-win\win64\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%–tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%


TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 0:43.64 | 0 | 3288
2 | 0:43.64 | 5:33.57 | 3289 | 28320
3 | 6:17.46 | 6:36.66 | 28321 | 58086
4 | 12:54.37 | 0:47.32 | 58087 | 61643
5 | 13:41.69 | 4:40.23 | 61644 | 82666
6 | 18:22.17 | 5:46.55 | 82667 | 108671
7 | 24:08.72 | 4:21.26 | 108672 | 128272
8 | 28:30.23 | 0:29.20 | 128273 | 130467
9 | 28:59.43 | 3:44.33 | 130468 | 147300
10 | 32:44.01 | 6:47.59 | 147301 | 177884
11 | 39:31.60 | 7:56.63 | 177885 | 213647


Track 1

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\01 Foreground.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:02.00

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 0.7 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 58B3B2B4
Copy CRC 58B3B2B4
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 2

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\02 Someday We’ll All Be Free.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 1.3 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 0A185B73
Copy CRC 0A185B73
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 3

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\03 The Blues Still Blossoms.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 1.6 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 02926302
Copy CRC 02926302
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 4

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\04 Middle Ground.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 0.7 X
Track quality 99.7 %
Test CRC 1343E532
Copy CRC 1343E532
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 5

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\05 Eye of I.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 1.7 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC FAF42D6F
Copy CRC FAF42D6F
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 6

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\06 Within You Are Answers.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 1.9 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 31C16DE6
Copy CRC 31C16DE6
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 7

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\07 Womb Water.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 1.9 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 9BB3EE01
Copy CRC 9BB3EE01
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 8

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\08 Background.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 1.0 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 71022165
Copy CRC 71022165
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 9

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\09 Send Seraphic Beings.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 1.7 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC E6CD31C3
Copy CRC E6CD31C3
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 10

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\10 Even the Sparrow.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 2.3 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC EF550D01
Copy CRC EF550D01
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 11

Filename C:\Users\Lenovo T530\Music\11 Fear Not.wav

Peak level 72.2 %
Extraction speed 2.5 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC DCEFEC64
Copy CRC DCEFEC64
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK


None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

No errors occurred

End of status report

–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6

[CTDB TOCID: Xw1uLDKvSsl24FvpJPL9BCeFKN0-] found
Submit result: Xw1uLDKvSsl24FvpJPL9BCeFKN0- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (2/2) Accurately ripped
2 | (2/2) Accurately ripped
3 | (2/2) Accurately ripped
4 | (2/2) Accurately ripped
5 | (2/2) Accurately ripped
6 | (2/2) Accurately ripped
7 | (2/2) Accurately ripped
8 | (2/2) Accurately ripped
9 | (2/2) Accurately ripped
10 | (2/2) Accurately ripped
11 | (2/2) Accurately ripped


==== Log checksum 982C9FC47E426EF823F95154C7D21FD72BA7A0DFA0445A19210AE164E0E2ECF5 ====

Thanks to the Original ripper !