Ingrid Laubrock & Tom Rainey - Brink (Intakt, 2024)

By Hinrich Julius

Already with a first listening this album impresses. It is quiet music, gentle dialogues of a couple who know each other, have gained a lot of experience to react. It is comforting music that makes you settle down when listening, always reaching out for the listener to draw him or her into the conversation. And both musicians do also succeed in surprising you, especially with highly varied sounds.

Both musicians are probably known to most readers of this blog, Tom Rainey adding varied rhythm to different forms of jazz from Kenny Werner and Fred Hersch to Tim Berne, Ingrid Laubrock starting out in Germany and over London now for many years an established member of the New York Downtown Scene. Together they also appear in too many recordings to mention. To my knowledge this is their fifth regular duo album plus one collection of home recordings, all of them worth listening and through the years quite varied. It started 2013 with And other Towns (Relative Pitch), already a dialogue which combined inventiveness with lyricism, followed in 2014 with Buoyancy (Relative Pitch) – a captivating live recording.  Utter (Relative Pitch) from 2018 with composed pieces derived from a tour of 2016 and since then refined, but again the conversation is what fascinates. During the pandemic in 2020 both were stuck to their home in Brooklyn and offered dialogues from there, first released as one recording per day and now as a collection available on bandcamp, Stir Crazy Episodes 1 – 60; some of the recordings using compositions of colleagues as a starting point. After these “messages from home” 2021 saw a next regular recording, Counterfeit Mars (Relative Pitch), again tight and comfortable dialogues, some even with a slight classical touch.

Now in 2024 I would call Brink (Intakt) at least partly a concept-album and a very successful one; 7 shorter pieces between 3 – 7 minutes are separated by interludes of 1 minute each (Brink I – VI). One does not hear the change of the label, the shorter pieces are a very worthwhile continuation of their previous work. These pieces start from a specific idea and develop when improvising. This can be rather quiet work between the sax in a higher register with gentle drumming leaving room for a saxophone solo (“Flock of Conclusions”) or constantly modified lines which get more agitated over the time (“Coaxing”). Sometimes the horn honks, I was reminded of ships (“Liquified columns”). Every piece offers something new and the best is the close connection between the players.

Brinks I – VII then offer techniques, primarily of the saxophone. Ingrid Laubrock demonstrates her full repertoire and even picks up techniques which remind of other musicians like the duck calls of John Zorn (Brink II and V) or continues overblowing of Evan Parker (Brink VI). The surprise is that all these techniques succeed in being musical, being pleasant and fitting into the album as a whole. The Brinks do serve as interesting interludes connecting the longer conversations.

Overall it is a highly successful album that serves well as a further addition to their already existing works, an album of close dialogues using the full range of techniques both of saxophone and drums and with this succeeding to be musical, captivating and surprising. Regardless if listened to with or without the knowledge of their previous works it is highly recommended.

Available as download or CD.