[Ahmed] - Giant Beauty

The Quietus

About two thirds into ‘Nights On Saturn’, Antonin Gerbal’s frenetic kick drum/snare polyrhythms and Joel Grip’s pulsing bass lines find themselves locked in a pattern so dynamic, so recklessly dashing that it begins to resemble a black metal blast beat. Between them, Seymour Wright’s saxophone and Pat Thomas’s piano sound on the brink of losing control, first sputtering hasty, broken phrases, then trying to upend each other in a series of mirrored, stabbing vamps. In what is likely one of the most gripping segments of music released this year, the intensity of playing rises to supernova levels. Then, like always, the group find an elegant way out, dispersing the accumulated energy into a sequence of lighter, meandering phrases, ultimately ending up in a passage of lovely modal jazz. Moments like these make [Ahmed] one of the most mind-blowing free jazz and improvisation groups in the world today.

Formed about ten years ago as an extension of Thomas, Gerbal, and Grip’s unconventional piano trio [Ism] (who also have an ace new album Maua out on 577 Records), [Ahmed] base all of their sets around the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. While the influence of the late US double bassist and oud player extends beyond just music in the quartet’s work, touching upon philosophical, political, and spiritual spheres, their journeys are much freer than just covers of his tunes. Abdul-Malik’s pieces serve as thematic anchor points, but each performance sees the players deconstruct, rearrange, reshape, and build up again their motifs in diverse ways, reacting to internal and external feedback loops in the process.

Take the aforementioned ‘Nights On Saturn’, for example. The version featured on Giant Beauty – a five CD box set released by John Chantler’s Fönstret label – was recorded on the first night of a five-day run at The Fifth Edition Festival for Other Music in August 2022. Compared to the previous recorded version that appeared on 2021’s Nights On Saturn (on Astral Spirits), this new live cut overflows with a sense of nervous anticipation and unbridled power, perhaps spurred on by the heatwave enveloping Sweden at the time or simply revealing the pent-up energy and excitement leading to the performance.

As Wright reveals to Chantler in an interview for the book accompanying the release, the group would reflect on the experiences of each day before the next concert. So when ‘Oud Blues’ rolls in on the second night, the performance feels tempered – even reserved when compared to the take releasing soon as Wood Blues on Astral Spirits – with a more direct focus and less chaotic energy present in each of the instrumentalists’ individual playing, but also a clearer structure in their collective interactions. Here, the group explores nuanced atmospheric directions, delving into lyrical blues sections and swinging romps. Whoever thinks that contemporary free jazz cannot be danced to, should really listen to this.

As its name suggests, ‘African Bossa Nova’ is equally danceable, propelled by Thomas’s emphatic piano grooves and Wright’s swirling, stuttering low register licks that feel like watching a couple passionately swaying on the dancefloor of a smoke filled club. Meanwhile, ‘El Haris (Anxious)’, whose earlier rendition can be heard on 2017’s New Jazz Imagination, and the previously unpublished ‘Rooh (The Soul)’ see [Ahmed] entertaining decidedly more textural, almost droning figures. As the group imply, this change of direction might have been influenced by experiencing the performances of Éliane Radigue’s Occam works, which were programmed in parallel to their concerts at the festival. Regardless of their genesis, these closing sets give the quartet an opportunity to showcase another facet of their work, trading ferocious tension for a quieter, simpler kind of beauty. An utter triumph.

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The Free Jazz Collective 0

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

The music of [Ahmed], quite deliberately, is too difficult to pin down or label. Of course someone who is not an acolyte, I must admit that I am, of their music, would comment that this is jazz based music. But is it really? Just because the quartet of Pat Thomas on piano, Joel Grip on double bass, Seymour Wright on alto saxophone and Antonin Gerbal on drums and percussion resembles a classic jazz quartet, it doesn’t mean that, by definition, it is so.

The music of the quartet, also, poses, a lot of questions. It isn’t something you wouldn’t expect if you followed their non-[Ahmed] musical activities. Most of them are fruitful adventures into sounds, traditions that need to be broken or extended, conjunctions between musical ideas and trajectories. And, probably, above all a lack of fear when confronting the unknown of what the outcome will be, when four different people interact and react.

On Giant Beauty there’s also the immense size of the release. A box set consisting of five CD’s clocking around forty five minutes, presenting five consecutive nights, in the summer of 2022, at Fylkingen in Stockholm. The reviewer, at least me in this case, feels bewildered, a bit intimidated but surely thrilled, or I should write psyched (again: I’m a big fan of their music) about this music that demands you time, since it’s over three hours.

[Ahmed]’s music also deals with repetition. Be it how to play “older” music with new ears and hearts or patterns that that they revisit, like this is the case in Giant Beauty. I feel very close to the idea that the vast majority of sounds are not “new” per se, but have been played, performed and listened to before. Somewhere and in various formations and combinations. This is the way, I try to perceive their music. But, still, the improvisational ethos lies there, a note to all the listeners that this music is not pre-fabricated, but, apart from general ideas, made on the spot.

I will not get into many details about the music, since I find it almost impossible to describe, for example on the first CD titled Nights on Saturn, forty eight impassioned minutes balancing between post-Ornette without solos jazz and the minimal approach they choose to present their material. On the second, more frantic and a bit more crazy (but, what the hell this word means when talking about music?) Oud Blues, the listener gets the idea of a meta blues quartet that, initially started as part of the New Thing but now –thanks to the percussive nature of Pat Thomas’ playing on the piano- is mostly focused on presenting dance music…

The third CD, African Bossa Nova, is as playful as the title suggests. An eccentric, energetic and intriguing take -actually their take- on bossa nova, offers the listener an alternate version of playful music to dance to. The sax seems in unison with the piano, while the, so called when it comes to [Ahmed], rhythm section is locked in a parallel route with the sax and the piano. The more Coltraneish CD four, titled Rooh (The Soul), dives deep into the core not just of Coltrane’s music with the classic quartet, but into the 60’s black music. Rooh (The Soul) is their prismatic and polyrhythmic take on an era of radical sounds but also esoteric thinking. But, again, as I mentioned before, this is my take on the music and I could be totally wrong.

The fifth and last CD is my least favorite, a fact that after repeated listening, troubled me a lot. On El Haris (Anxious), as the fifth CD is titled, the quartet is transformed (remember that the compositions of Ahmed Abdul-Malik are quite often re-imagined here) into a big band that delivers swing, blues and a whole trajectory of Black musical tradition. It troubled me because even though I realize that this is the ideal ending for a box set that quite intentionally looks back and (re) imagines the past, some parts of the past do not coincide with my personal taste. Mea culpa.

Giant Beauty is massive in its ideas and willingness to step on two boats, the past and the present. I really like the fact that it doesn’t offer an easy way out. You have to listen and think, probably (re) imagine how to get out of your comfort zone. Probably Wood Blues, the ”proper” album for [Ahmed] in 2024, is a more concentrated affair, but both of them are real contenders for the best music of 2024.

Listen here:
Giant Beauty by أحمد [Ahmed]

@koultouranafigo