Pi33 Records - Steve Coleman (as), Jonathan Finlayson (t), Tim Albright (tb), Jen Shyu (v), Thomas Morgan (b), Tyshawn Sorey Marcus Gilmore (d) and Ramon Garcia Perez (perc).Rec. 2006 and 2007

Although it has been five years since this set’s predecessor Weaving Symbolics, Steve Coleman has not entirely been absent from jazz consciousness. His outlook on the world of sound, rhythm and tonal organisation has been more than present in the work of anybody from Malik Mezzadri and Robert Mitchell in Europe to Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa in America, so this new album does not feel so much like a return to the fray as part of a large edifice of work in contemporary jazz that involves many artists, of which Coleman has been something of a principal architect. The challenge for him is to continue to enrich the vocabulary to which he has significantly contributed over two decades, and for the most part he is successful in that endeavour.

All of the metric complexity and the abundance of cycles in the organization of the music that defined past works such as Genesis or The Ascension To Light are present and correct, but there is a more pronounced ebb, flow and wave-like sensation in many of the arrangements, something that is enhanced by the unusual line-up of the band. The prominent use of three horns and a voice creates a flexible, flicker-like sound palette, and the excellent Jen Shyu, the singer in question, is not simply assigned a melodic role but also does something akin to offbeat piano comping that bathes the brass and reed in alternately grainy and gossamer, flutelike tones. They enhance the overall liquidity of the music. Coleman’s own improvising is incisive and perhaps has a greater use of allegro phrases as well as his trademark staccatos, something that increases the impact of his shorter solos, that have perhaps acquired more propulsion than was the case in times passed. Indeed, there is as much momentum and syncopation, as much “swing” here as there has ever been on a Coleman record, but it is not rigidly built on a blues-based model.

Harvesting Semblances perhaps lacks the sheer shock value of a Genesis or Motherland Pulse, both key statements in jazz of the last two decades, but it nonetheless stands as a notable reminder of the saxophonist’s undeniable artistic originality and his unremitting desire to navigate an ocean of sound without the same safety raft as some of his peers.

 - Kevin Le Gendre