Vijay Iyer Trio Break Stuff (2 LP)

High Quality 150g Vinyl Double LP!
“Break Stuff” is what happens after formal elements have been addressed. Vijay Iyer calls the break “a span of time in which to act. It’s the basis for breakdowns, breakbeats, and break dancing… it can be the moment when everything comes to life.” A number of the pieces here are breakdowns of other Iyer constructions. Some are from a suite premiered at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, some derive from Open City, a collaboration with novelist Teju Cole and large ensemble. The trio energetically recasts everything it touches. “Hood” is a tribute to Detroit techno pioneer Robert Hood. On “Work”, Vijay pays homage to his “number one hero”, Thelonious Monk. “Countdown” reconsiders the classic Coltrane tune inside a rhythmic framework inspired by West African music. “Mystery Woman” is driven by compound pulses which owe a debt to South Indian drumming. Fast moving and quick-witted, the group has developed a strong musical identity of its own, with an emphasis on what Iyer calls “co-constructing”, exploring all the dynamics of playing together. Yet the three players also get abundant solo space and, in a reflective moment at the album’s centre, Iyer plays a moving version of Billy Strayhorn’s “Blood Count” alone. Break Stuff, recorded in June 2014 at New York’s Avatar Studio and produced by Manfred Eicher, is the third ECM release from Vijay Iyer. It follows the chamber music recording Mutations and the film-and-music project Radhe radhe: Rites of Holi. The Vijay Iyer Trio is touring in the US and Europe in February and March 2015.
"Positioning, flow, calibration, order – each is keenly considered here, and each helps make this the trio’s most compelling date so far. Balance is paramount. Iyer’s interests trigger a wealth of ideas, and from the trio’s rhythmic slant (one track conjures Robert Hood’s crackling techno beats) to the pianist’s keyboard touch (Andrew Hill’s sense of stealth gets a nod at various points), the larger picture is always kept in view." - Jim Macnie, DownBeat (five stars)
"Beyond all stereotypes: Jazz pianist Vijay Iyer has recorded the masterful album 'Break Stuff' with his trio, which effortlessly bridges the gap between club and concert hall." - Gregor Dotzauer, Der Tagesspiegel Berlin
"The title of ‘Break Stuff’ refers to what pianist/composer Iyer describes, more obliquely than at first glance, is contained in the “break” as “the basis for breakdowns, break-beats, and break dancing... the moment when everything comes to life.” There may not be a lot of dance potential on this highly complex album where there’s no obvious beat – it’s all about flow – but certainly there is a sense of the unexpected in the jagged pauses, weighted phrases, tiny deafening silences, and runaway momentum of the material on the album some of which was premiered at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and some from Open City, a collaboration with writer Teju Cole. […] A state-of-the-art jazz piano trio album. No one sounds like them."- Stephen Graham, Marlbank
"Balladesk, technoid, free of cliches: Masterly stuff from the Vijay Iyer Trio [...] The common cliches are missing. The usual role distribution of melody, harmony and rhythm among the instruments has been overridden. Sometimes you catch yourself rocking along to a beat that no one is playing: it is created between the lines of the three equal musicians [...] An art of grouting, as amazing as it is exhilarating." - Ulrich Stock, Die Zeit
"This is a very distinctive piano trio working with great intellectual incisiveness, but also making music of excitement and emotional depth." - Peter Bacon, Birmingham Post
"All three of them know that jazz today can no longer live on its own, and get inspiration from HipHop ('Break Stuff') or minimal techno pioneer Robert Hood ('Hood'), but without throwing themselves at these styles. It's still acoustic piano trio jazz. Just from today." - Tobias Rapp, Der Spiegel
"Pianist Vijay Iyer’s 11-year-old trio is a highly manoeuvrable vehicle for his African, Indian and maths-inspired rhythmic ideas, now at a dizzying pinnacle of contemporary jazz multitasking. […]This is cutting-edge music, but always accessible." - John Fordham, The Guardian
"While there's no doubt that much of this group's development has been the consequence of time spent together honing its unique complexion, beyond ‘Break Stuff's’ more pristine sonics there's little doubt, when compared to its ACT recordings, that this recording has benefited significantly from the "fourth" member of Iyer's trio: label head and producer Manfred Eicher. If the three recordings Iyer has prolifically released in just eleven months are any indication, the pianist's move to ECM—already yielding significant results—has only begun to deliver on even greater promises to come." - John Kelman, All About Jazz
"The fifth and best record of Mr. Iyer’s trio […] The band’s refractive language makes sense of whatever material it plays. You don’t hear the record and seize on its sense of rupture or argument. Instead, it sounds whole." - Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
"Iyer, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Marcus Gilmore have fully incorporated electronica and hip-hop into a jazz vocabulary. Despite the album’s layered meters, you couldn’t ask for a more swinging ‘Work’, or a more moving solo-piano treatment of ‘Blood Count’." - Jon Garelick, Boston Globe
"With ‘Break Stuff’, his third trio album and his first on the ECM label, Vijay Iyer comes into his own as a master pianist, composer, and conceptualizer—one of the truly great jazz musicians of our time." - Red Kaplan, Stereophile
"Within this flowing and well-programmed collection of 12 tunes are 1) a tribute to Detroit techno producer Robert Hood, 2) a similar nod to major influence Thelonious Monk and 3) a solo take of Billy Strayhorn’s final written composition ‘Blood Count.’ Within the tradition, but equally outside it, Iyer’s music knows no bounds—and it sounds thoroughly delightful here." - Dave DiMartino, Rollingstone.com
"Complex, multilayered rhythmic ideas are passed between Iyer and his colleagues (bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore), building shiver-inducing tension. But however dense the music gets, there is always groove and always an underlying logic. Alongside Iyer’s testing original compositions, standards from Monk, Strayhorn and Coltrane reveal the trio’s working methods and make evident their firm grasp of the American tradition, a tradition of which they are to the forefront in extending." - Cormac Larkin, Irish Times
"Iyer’s approach is at once angular and melodic, at turns delicate and muscular. At this point, Crump and Gilmore know him so well, and vice versa, that every moment of interaction is completely empathetic, almost telepathic. […] Each tune brims with tension and dynamics […] In the final analysis, it is Iyer’s vision and individuality, but also his bond with his trio, that makes ‘Break Stuff’ such a smashing success." - Steve Greenlee, Jazz Times
"This trio remains one of the ongoing jazz ensembles that seems to discover new things at every turn, that seems simultaneously on the cutting edge and embedded deep in the music’s history. Vijay Iyer, Stephan Crump, and Marcus Gilmore continue to make the argument that we are in a golden age for daring jazz that is also accessible to any open ear, young, old, or otherwise." - Will Layman, Pop Matters
"Together with his long-standing trio with bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore, Iyer finds a fascinating balance between intellect and emotion, between conception and improvisation, between technical brilliance and musical ingenuity, which in its nonchalant naturalness clearly goes beyond the already remarkable previous CDs of the trio [...] A highlight right at the beginning of 2015." - Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, Jazz Podium
"Pianist Vijay Iyer's latest album is broadly a resetting of compositions for some larger ensembles for his long standing trio. The process of deconstructing them - stripping them down and reforming them for a classic jazz trio of piano, bass and drums - Iyer sees as ‘breaks’ […] This is a compelling record, full of imaginative ideas and fascinating rhythms, trying new things whilst firmly rooted in a classic jazz context." - Patrick Hadfield, London Jazz News
"Although Iyer is also a very dynamic sound architect, he also builds larger arcs of tension with all his preference for an aesthetic of contrasts. But even on the most pathetic climax, there is a moment of distance and control with him, he is a performer and not a ravished ecstatic. A fabulous and masterful CD. Rich, surprising. And also seemingly contradictory: music with a great shadow cast." - Peter Rüedi, Die Weltwoche
"If earlier in Iyer’s career he thrived in producing massive textures and colossal chords, now his pianism sounds lighter in tone and more ethereal in texture, with comparable response from his longtime trio, with bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore. Most of the works are originals developed by the band, but the pianist also presents an exquisitely delicate, harmonically advanced solo account of Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Bloodcount’. In the end, Iyer stands as one of the most adventurous and technically accomplished pianists in jazz, bridging the past, present and future of the music with other genres that happen to pique his curiosity. And ours." - Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
"The album’s unquestionable highlight is ‘Hood.’ Composed for techno producer Robert Hood, it’s an original piece in which Iyer and Gilmore play rigorously metric patterns that seem repetitive but exist in a constant state of metamorphosis. The pair seems to swap rhythmic and melodic roles by the end, as Crump plays a stubby ostinato that functions as the work’s crucial connective tissue. The track is one of the most exhilarating pieces of music I’ve heard all year. Elsewhere on ‘Break Stuff’ the band refashions Coltrane’s hard-bop masterpiece ‘Countdown’ and Iyer offers a brooding solo interpretation of Billy Strayhorn’s deathbed swan song ‘Blood Count.’ On the surface Iyer’s trio is a model of composure and grace, but the ideas darting beneath the surface are as electric and bold as anything in jazz today." - Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
"It’s fascinating listening to any one of the three musicians, but their totality is close to transcendent. The title track is a good place to pay attention to the album’s seemingly quizzical theme. As Iyer says in the liner notes, ‘A break in music is still music: a span of time in which to act.’ While not always accessible — the relationships here to blues and swing can be quite abstract — ‘Break Stuff’ is physical, intuitive, intellectual, and emotional. That is, it’s exciting." - Paul Weideman, Santa Fé New Mexican
"Break Stuff is modern jazz on the bleeding edge, a music that not only asks musical questions but answers them, and it does so accessibly and immediately, no matter the form or concept it chooses to express. This trio aims at an interior center, finds it, and pushes out, projecting Iyer & Co.'s discoveries." - Thom Jurek, allmusic.com

• Double LP
• 150g Vinyl
• High Quality Pressing
• Free MP3 Download Code Included
• Recorded at Avatar Studios, New York, June 2014
• Gatefold jacket
• Made in Germany

• Vijay Iyer, piano
• Stephan Crumb, double bass
• Marcus Gilmore, drums