Mythos (Biophilia Records)
Altus
Released June 7, 2024
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2024
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About:
Altus, in addition to being a collective, is a relationship between our band and our audience. By engaging in our music the audience creates a shared mythology and community with us. We believe oral traditions, whether musical or mythological, will always vary—performer to performer and performance to performance. Mythos was developed through live performances over the last three years during which storytelling has become an integral part of how we connect with our audience. Mythos takes two important myths relevant to today from Greco Roman and Yoruba cultures and tells them through the lens of Black American music.
We chose The Greek myth of Prometheus and the Yoruba myth of Oludumare because of their overlapping themes of creation, power, struggle, and love, which also happens to mirror the history of Jazz music: Through the innovations of Black Americans, Jazz musicians built the library of Alexandria of modern music only to give it away for free because they knew it was important. And yet, just like Prometheus and Oludumare, Black Americans were punished for this gift.
For both the Prometheus and Oludumare myths we composed musical interpretations drawing on Black American traditions. To us as composers, this means ensuring improvisation plays an integral part in each piece. This allows for individual musicians to shape the story with their unique musical voice. Additionally, it means assimilating traditions in ways that make them our own, such as the talking drum pattern at the heart of “Origin,” the third track on Mythos.
Altus has developed a shared language and a trust that creates a singular sound from the multitude of voices: Neta Raanan on tenor and soprano saxophones, Nathan Reising on alto saxophone, Ryan Sands on drum set and percussion, and ourselves, Dave Adewumi on Trumpet and Isaac Levien on Double Bass. Whether a composition is co-composed or brought in by a single musician it belongs to the band as a whole once it is added to our repertoire. We view this as an act of distributing power. As such, we embody the myths; acting as the catalyst for the creation of music, community, and mythology. With our compositions as the original story, every improvisation and every performance is a retelling.”
Track Listing:
1. Embrace 04:35
2. Lay of the land 01:28
3. Origin 06:13
4. Fire Drill 03:18
5. Innocence and After 03:29
6. The Last Gift 06:57
7. Mountain March 04:50
8. Kill the Masters 04:54
9. Revolt 02:19
Personnel:
Dave Adewumi: trumpet
Isaac Levien: bass
Neta Raanan: tenor saxophone
Nathan Reising: alto saxophone
Ryan Sands: drums
Recorded August 5-6, 2022, at Big orange Sheep, Brooklyn, NY, by Michael Perez-Cisneros
Mixing and Mastering by Dave Darlington
Produced by Dave Adewumi
Review:
New York’s Altus evoke grand, avant-garde jazz mysteries on their full-length debut, 2024’s sonically layered Mythos. An artfully adventurous jazz ensemble, Altus is led by 2019 Carmine Caruso Trumpet Competition winner Dave Adewumi and bassist Isaac Levien with tenor saxophonist Neta Raanan, alto saxophonist Nathan Reising, and drummer Ryan Sands. While the group formed in 2020, Adweumi, Levien, and Sands initially met while studying at Boston’s New England Conservatory in 2012. Since those early undergraduate days, each member of the group has established himself as a formidable talent, playing in a bevy of genre-crossing projects with artists like Olli Hirvonen, Frank Carlberg, Jason Moran, Christian Sands, and more. As Altus, they bring their varied influences together, crafting a sound that pulls liberally from acoustic post-bop, classical, folk, and avant-garde traditions. The album, which is loosely inspired by both the Greek myth of Prometheus and the Yoruba myth of Olodumare, has an organic, textural quality; the songs often feel like poems turned into sound. This is especially true of the opening “Embrace,” a lilting, gaseous chamber piece that sounds like a cloud of horns floating slowly against a dark sky. Later, we get the evocatively titled “Mountain March,” where the group’s dissonant horn lines and slowly clacking drum-and-bass interplay call to mind a Tolkien-esque journey through a fantastical land. Yet just when you think Mythos will be all literary tone poems, Altus bursts to life. “Origin” starts with a clapped montuno before the band leaps into a hard swinging groove marked by driving, throaty solos. There’s also the bluesy, Mingus-like group interplay of “Fire Drill” and the rambling skronk and funk dynamism of “Kill the Masters.”
Matt Collar (AllMusic)
