No Base Trio - NBT II (Setola di Maiale, 2022)

By Keith Prosk

Leonardo Osuna, Jonathan Suazo, and Gabriel Vicéns play seven jams for drums, saxophones, flute, and EWI, and electric guitar on the 105’ NBT II.

As the title implies this is the second release of the trio, after their eponymous debut, though they appeared together before on each other’s individual efforts, such as Suazo’s Extracts of a Desire or Vicéns’ Days.

Extended grooves of syncopated polyrhythms shifting and in progressive movements, accented with bursts in density and dynamics, simmer with buoyant energy but never so wild as to boil over. A tight kit and bright clicks, clean and crisp guitar, and winds in biomorphic curves evoke a slickness complementary to its dextrous weaves. Which makes textural explorations like beefy riffs, amplifier hum, or scratching string corrugations, breathwork, and material changes across percussion and winds more impactful. Longer durations of subtler variations of tenacious repetitions can induce trance-like states and allow lines time to stumble in, find their footing, layer, and interlock in a way that might remind of Fela Kuti’s long introductions. For the head bobbers.