In recent weeks we’ve shared a couple of tracks from Tether, the new full-length from New York-based saxophonist and composer Alden Hellmuth on Nils Frahm‘s LEITER imprint. The album “builds upon 2024’s punk-inflected jazz record Good Intentions to explore the creative potential of an ensemble embracing the tension between composition and improvisation,” as we wrote:
Tether is a fitting name for the release, speaking to both the connection between Hellmuth and her supporting cast—bassists Logan Kane and Miller Wrenn and drummer Justin Brown (Thundercat, Aja Monet)—and how group, and indeed the audience, act something like a leash within the spontaneity of improvisation. The musicians might play themselves out into unexpected territory, but there’s always a line to bring them back into the heart of the group.
After lead track ‘Face The Wall’ introduced the raucous and visionary nature of this sound, subsequent single ‘Microfictions’ pushed further. The song “wastes no time in pitching the audience into the depths of her adventurous approach,” as we continued, “drawing on Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music to create a style of improvisation centring on melody. Scurrying percussion adds a sense of urgency, while Hellmuth’s trademark sax skates over the surface with virtuosic personality.”
With the album’s release imminent, Alden Hellmuth has shared one final single, ”Definitely Not Friends’. But despite what the title might suggest, the song is an embodiment of the trust and intuition shared between Hellmuth and her bandmates, as well as their elastic habit of playing out in all directions but always snapping back into the heart of the group. The result, like Tether as a whole, is imaginative, daring and often frantic, driven as though by the compelling force of like-minded musicians encouraging one another forward. The listener is cast as an extra party within the experience, themselves an extra member of the ensemble, pushed and pulled between the various elements so as to become fully immersed within the sound.
Tether will be released on the 26th June via LEITER and you can pre-order it now from the Alden Hellmuth Bandcamp page.
