GEARBOX RECORDS 18th September 2026
Deliciously free and wide ranging, this album is a celebration of universal love and very fine playing. The drums are particularly notable, loose-limbed and constantly roaming, nudging and rolling. That drummer is Franklin Kiermyer and he’s the band leader. That’s not to say that they are the only instrument that is free range – horns go their own way and only when they chorus, or voices work together, is there a joint plan. Those voices pop up straight away on the opener, ‘One Is Love’, prompting thoughts of Sun Ra’s Arkestra and its message of cosmic peace. A gospel choir repeats one simple phrase until it takes on a deeper meaning inside and alongside the instruments. The lyric ideas here arise from Kiermyer’s Buddhist practice and are integrated into the whole, featuring in certain key pieces, bringing a long-form unity I last heard with Kamasi Washington.
The album is full of great, instinctive players, creating a unified form despite / because of the jazzy freedom. There is a spiritual thread holding everything in place and the set feels like an act of collective world-worship, somewhat like the effect of that classic free-yet-united and spiritual classic, ‘A Love Supreme’. For loud intensity, check also the free-blowing and wildly experimental ‘Maombi’, where the sax and piano seem to be racing and seeing how far each can push their simul-solos. Or the opposite, in ‘Clairvoyance’, where I am reminded of the flowing feel of how ‘Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise’ was played at The Village Vanguard by Coltrane – my Rosetta Stone for spiritual jazz.
In this music I can hear Kiermyer’s dissatisfaction “with much of the ways I was taught to experience reality. For example, it was explained that everything was made of matter as distinct from mind and spirit and this struck me as false. Amidst all this somewhat uncomfortable doubt and questioning, I was hearing music and felt safe there. Music made sense because I felt it. It changed me.”
This is deeply spiritual music, transcending expectations.
Ross McGibbon