ECM

What more can be said about the Vijay Iyer Trio that hasn’t been expressed by jazz and pop critics since the emergence of the Upstate, NY-born pianist onto the scene exactly twenty years ago?

Plenty, so long as the trio’s most definitive lineup of Iyer, double bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore continue to push the envelope of inventiveness and improvisation the way they have since 2009’s Historocity. And on their hotly awaited ECM debut, entitled Break Stuff. Those two words might be forever tainted in their usage as the title to a Limp Bizkit song. However, the VIT steal the phrase back, seemingly utilizing it more as a declaration of their roots in hip-hop and electronic breakbeat theory than its prior incarnation as a declaration for mindless frat boy violence.

“A break in music is still music,” Iyer declares in the liner notes to the album, produced by ECM head Manfred Eicher at TK. “On paper, a break seems like next to nothing, but in practice it can be the moment where everything comes to life.”

Here, Iyer, Crump and Gilmore deliver a thoughtful, challenging and, in many spots, gorgeous dissertation on break theory, be it in its acoustic deconstruction of the mathematically charted rhythm patterns of the late Detroit minimalist techno wizard Robert Hood on “Hood” or within the poignant lyricism of the Trio’s versions of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps period gem “Countdown”, Billy Strayhorn’s final piece of music “Blood Count” (played solo by Vijay) and Thelonious Monk’s “Work” or within the stylized intricacies of such choice original material as “Diptych”, “Geese” and “Wrens”.

Break Stuff is magnificent in its minimalism, and kicks off what hopes to be a long and fruitful relationship between the Vijay Iyer Trio and ECM in the years to come.