Irreversible Entanglements – Future Present Past
Today, free-jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements returns with its sixth studio album, Future Present Past out via Impulse!
Ahead of the record’s release, the group shared the double single “Don’t Lose Your Head” / “Vibrate Higher,” both featuring contributions from MOTHERBOARD, as well as the album’s opening track, “Juntos Vencemos,” featuring contributions by Helado Negro.
At its heart, Future Present Past is a rallying cry, urging listeners to seize agency in a world that robs people of it every day. Irreversible Entanglements preaches for a higher morality, as well as a higher power, on this record; in the collective’s view, people are beholden to the former and cannot expect to be saved by the latter, hence the warning shot “Don’t Lose Your Head.” The low, heated delivery from Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother) finds an airy foil in MOTHERBOARD, whose voice soars across half of the album’s tracks.
Future Present Past bristles with a restless, contained energy; skittering percussion, Camae’s deeper timbre, and scattershot horn runs reveal this energy without fully unleashing it, biding its time for the moment when it can be used for liberation. The result is an album of potential, of not just revolution or spirituality, but of where music can head in the 21st century amid new technology and blurrier borders. More than anything, Future Present Past asks the listener to be observant, to be inspired, and to be brave:
The weight of a certain world can feel cruel and unusual. Another world up lifts. 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 fightsongs, we overcome. To hold on, to keep going, together we overcome. – Irreversible Entanglements
This week, Irreversible Entanglements will also play dates in both New York City and Philadelphia. In NYC, the band plays alongside Shabaka and Tom Skinner on March 26th, offering a chance to hear Future Present Past live ahead of its release. Later this week, IE plays at Solar Myth in Philly on March 27th and 28th.
Irreversible Entanglements Live
Mar. 27th — Solar Myth, Philadelphia, PA
Mar. 28th — Solar Myth, Philadelphia, PA
*with Shabaka and Tom Skinner
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