“Notes” by Underground Spiritual Game introduces the Brooklyn trio in their baritone sax, electric bass and drums format, named after a Fela Kuti album that anchors the project in afrobeat history. Bassist Ran Livneh leads the group with drummer Eran Fink and baritone saxophonist Eden Bareket, working with material shaped by Ethio-jazz, afrobeat and free jazz improvisation in a low-register trio setting.

Livneh also plays in Anbessa Orchestra and Habbina Habbina, projects that work with Ethiopian and Middle Eastern repertoires. With Underground Spiritual Game he narrows that field to a stripped trio, using simple written figures and repeated patterns rather than larger arrangements. Their music draws on Ethiopian scales and rhythmic patterns, Moroccan lines and a free jazz lineage, and on “Notes” this comes through in a short pattern for bass and drums that repeats while the baritone saxophone shifts its phrasing above it.

They recently released their debut LP Of Time through New York-based label Vibromonk Records. The album sets out a sequence of pieces built from similar concise structures, leaving space for improvisation to alter phrasing and intensity from one performance to the next. The group describes their method as exploring “the relationship of tone and atmosphere over musical forms, nature and abstraction.” In practice, that means original compositions and tight interpretations that keep Ethiopian and afrobeat roots clearly audible while the free jazz element shapes how lines are played.

Listen to and purchase your copy of Of Time HERE