| Jazz moderne |
“Potentially Interesting Jazz Music”: A Genre-Bending Delight That Channels the Muppets and Miles Davis Alike.
It’s hard to pin down I Hold the Lion’s Paw. It’s experimental jazz, yes, but it’s also a winking, theatrical adventure, equal parts absurd and brilliant, as if the Muppets wandered into a Sun Ra rehearsal and never left. The humor is sly, the ambition immense. And while this album certainly won’t appeal to everyone, those with a taste for the wildly unconventional may find themselves grinning and captivated in equal measure.
“I want the audience to join us in a rebellion against genre,” declares Reuben Lewis, the project’s trumpeter and spiritual guide. “Our music is about journey. We’ve never cared about style or conventions. My role as a leader is simply to leave the door open to what’s possible.”
From the opening seconds, you feel it: the surreal sense of being dropped into a video game, or a sound poem, maybe both. Spoken word opens the album, intensifying its poetic dimension. The work is three-dimensional in the truest sense: Do you focus on the lyrics, the rhythms, the textures? Or do you let go and surrender to a kind of melodic dramaturgy that emerges, ghost-like, from the sonic void? These are the kinds of questions this album asks, and each listener’s answers will be shaped by their own cultural instincts.
Drawing inspiration from genre-defying icons like Ornette Coleman, Laurie Anderson, Don Cherry, Miles Davis, and Sun Ra, Potentially Interesting Jazz Music melds slow-burning trumpet lines with hypnotic bass grooves, synthesizers, spoken word, voice layering, percussion, and more. Yet it never loses cohesion or slips into indulgence. From the intoxicating electronics and trumpet swells of “Mechanical Ghosts” to Emily Bennett’s ethereal vocal arrangements on “When the Earth and Sky Conspired,” the album offers a futuristic vision of jazz as improvisational art in a constant state of reinvention.
Jazz reclaims the spotlight on the second track, which flirts with funk and ambles off toward the unknown. Imagine standing on a city street, catching snatches of sound in the hot shimmer of summer. There’s a hazy image, part Miles, part Ornette, that clings to the asphalt. This is urban jazz, deeply intellectual yet emotionally resonant. The album’s nine collaborative tracks were recorded during an intense seven-hour session, then sculpted in post-production, deconstructed, manipulated, reassembled into compact, meticulously crafted sonic forms.
This manipulation of sounds and recordings feels, at times, almost political, or at least scientific. Appearances rarely scream “jazz,” but the soul of the form pulses beneath every moment. Potentially Interesting Jazz Music is the soundtrack of a collective ensemble in a perpetual state of renewal, driven by attentive listening, boundless curiosity, technical prowess, and a shared vision of what music can become.
Like a visit to a contemporary art museum, the album invites you to sit down, slow down, look closer, and listen deeper. In an age that rushes faster than reason, Potentially Interesting Jazz Music feels like a deliberate act of resistance. It’s a curiosity worth exploring, alone or with friends, in laughter or in awe. Love it or hate it, you’ll talk about it. And sometimes, that’s the point.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, July 20th 2025
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Musicians :
Reuben Lewis |Trumpet, Synths, Pedals
Emily Bennett | Voice, Synths, Lyrics, Vocal Composition
Adam Halliwell | Bass Guitar, Guitar, Double Neck Guitar, 12-String Guitar, Flute
Ronny Ferella | Drums, percussion
Featuring
Tariro Mavondo | Poetry, Voice (Track 1)
Michelle Nicolle | Voice (Track 9)
Tracklist :
Level Check // Voodoo
Prime Time
Thank You
Mechanical Ghosts
Potentially Interesting Jazz Music
Leave
Progressive Opposition
Big Bois
When The Earth and Sky Conspired