Mind Maintenance

Chicago-based Joshua Abrams is a jazz bassist whose career encompasses a range of experimental strands. He’s long been an aficionado and player of the gimbri of Morocco’s Gnawa; his album, Simultonality, with the Natural Information Society musical collective, was reviewed in the July 2017 issue (#129).

This striking duo set features Abrams’ gimbri with drummer Chad Taylor on mbira (thumb piano), and it does what is says on the cover – eschewing musical labels of jazz, world, experimental, other for the singular goal of mind maintenance, meditation, the percussive buzz inherent in both instruments combining together across nine tracks into a resonant and calming whole. It’s a place to get lost in without fear of not finding your way back. Abrams and Taylor themselves go back a long way – they first played together in the mid-90s – and these performances mix composition with a very well-seasoned instinct for mutual improvisation. It’s hard to think of a previous collaboration between the two instruments, and it’s hard to pull yourself away once you put it on. It’s music for well-being, sound that massages, soothes and resonates. A regular dose at dusk or daybreak could be just what the night doctor ordered…