Continuing with the countdown of the Jazzwise albums of the year, pick up the Dec/Jan issue out now in your local shop or buy online at jazzwise.com for all the juicy individual writer lists of new releases, reissues and gigs of the year that made the cut

Six years ago when Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd’s protest album In What Language won Jazzwise Album of the Year the New York-state raised US/South Indian pianist who turns 40 next year stood there in what appears to be a faux sheepskin coat in the photograph looking right at you alongside poet/rapper Ladd who seems to be – like Iyer – about to take on all-comers. Iyer at the time channelled righteous (or should that be riotous?) indignation in the atmosphere of post-9/11 state paranoia into something tangible via his keyboard explorations of the jazz landscape at that time reeling both from the temporary vacuum that existed in the lull after the innovations of M-BASE and most tellingly affected by the widespread disillusion of the creative community in America felt during the Bush years, even before the full horror of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan set in.

Fast forwarding to last year Iyer released his trio album Historicity which has won huge acclaim for its originality and daring, taking on as it does a traditional jazz format by insidiously dismantling its clichés with a staggering complexity that nonetheless manages to connect emotionally with audiences.

In London with the trio in July at the Vortex Iyer performed 'Human Nature' from Solo which at the time had not been released and which had just two months earlier been recorded in California. Released a few months after that memorable gig, first reactions to the album from many at the time often bypassed the now widely covered Porcaro/Bettis song made famous by Michael Jackson and later Miles Davis in favour of the sixth track ‘Autoscopy’ which as Iyer says in his notes to the album “refers to a type of out-of-body experience in which you observe your actions from outside of (usually above) your body.” The track itself opens like the soundtrack to a creepy film as Iyer’s fingers crawl all over the keyboard reaching a fracturing crescendo that like many of Iyer’s runs on the album holds you hostage in their intensity. Solo is also, importantly, steeped in jazz traditions (with Monk and Ellington tunes along the way) but in some way you really don’t want to use the word ‘tradition’ as the album is so much about the here-and-now even though in terms of technology and instrumentation it’s as old fashioned as they come.

– Stephen Graham