Jazz
Out Of Your Head Records · 2 October 2026
The fifth and eighth tracks on “Utility Modern” are called “Document and Tapestry” and “Tapestry and Document”. The first runs seven forty-six and is the longest piece on the record, a slow burn with nobody overplaying and Rashaan Carter’s bass holding up the guitar’s picking; the second runs four forty-one and closes. Brandon Seabrook has built the whole album that way, out on 2 October on Out Of Your Head Records: eight pieces, forty-three minutes forty-seven, and a method that consists of returning to the same material with the order altered.
Marcus Gilmore completes the trio on drums, and he has more to do here than accompany. On “The Serial Fabulist” (four minutes eight, the shortest track) Gilmore carries the piece with very fast cymbal work and kick hits placed against the beat, and Seabrook cuts in with brief acoustic sections that slow nothing down. “Star-Crossed Phantasms”, already out as a single on 18 September, opens with clean layered tones before veering into dissonant passages, and in the middle there is a drum solo that works the whole kit. The other card is “Membrane Soundtable”, five fifty-three, where Seabrook swaps the guitar for a banjo and the band pushes in 5/4.
One piece does not hold its size. “Once Upon A Time In The Quest” runs four twenty and spends nearly two of those on an ambient build-up before the groove arrives: half the track is preamble, and once it gets to what it came to say there is no time left to unfold it. Across the rest of the record the problem is the opposite of what you might expect, because the odd tunings and sour progressions don’t make the record impenetrable: what is hard is keeping the same level of density across eight consecutive tracks.
It follows “Object of Unknown Function” (Pyroclastic, 18 October 2024) and is Seabrook’s first for Out Of Your Head, the New York label that also puts out Stephan Crump’s “Passerine”.
Rating: 7.5/10
Text by Aina Torrents