Many jazz fans first encountered the deeply expressive music of saxophonist/composer on 2014's in the company of pianist , bassist , and drummer . Since then, he's released a slew of fascinating projects, including his award-winning breakthrough, 2021's , a carefully conceived, artfully executed, musically diverse investigation of George Washington Carver's life and achievements. , his follow-up and debut, is performed by the core trio of on tenor sax, on cello and pedals, and on drums. These 11 tunes all offer kinetic immediacy. They reveal ' compositional skill, articulated across tense balladry, muscular post-bop, spacey gospel, blues, and modal and spiritual jazz, balanced by unruly sonics, textured dissonance, and a profound lyric sensibility. The brief, angular, almost funky 44-second opener "Foreground" sounds like a jet readying for takeoff. It's followed by a devastating, beautiful read of 's soul-gospel classic "Someday We'll All Be Free." guests on cornet, playing twinned and responsorial lines to ' horn as 's electronically distorted cello rumbles like an electric guitar and 's martial drum kit underscores its emotionally open feel without forsaking its musicality. "The Blues Still Blossoms" isn't like any other blues. investigates a short, repetitive nursery rhyme-esque melody (think ), inverting and expanding notes in call and response with the rhythm section as they slip the 12-bar frame. The title track spends its first minute with a distorted, funereal cello over rumbling, constantly rolling tom-toms. When enters -- in full wail -- one can hear the ghosts of and in his playing. "Womb Water" is an innovative, tonally compelling adaptation of 's "Womb Waters Scent of the Burning Armadillo Shell" from 1984's , followed by another dissonant blowing interlude ("Background") that introduces the gorgeous "Send Seraphic Beings," a hip post-bop stroller. reaches into his horn's lower register, cycles the melody, and solos on an entirely different plane as the rhythm section dances and swings with a gentle Latin groove. assists again on "Even the Sparrow," a jazz-gospel dirge with ambitious interaction between the horns as pedaled cello creates rhapsodic harmonies in the backdrop. On closer "Fear Not," ' trio plays alongside Washington, D.C. post-punk trio , featuring former members (bass) and (drums) with renowned jazz-rock guitarist . trade lines amidst the plodding force of two drummers. 's guitar is all fuzz and bleat, and it's entwined with electric bass. ' tenor goes right at and the drummers. His circular theme roils and is propelled to become a headbanger, wedding unhinged anthemic melody to unsettling dynamic and tonal chaos before finding assonant resolution. showcases the immediacy and range in ' musical imagination in composition, improvisation, and communication with a freer, more immediately instinctive persona on full display. All killer, no filler. ~ Thom Jurek