By Brian Earley
In February of 2025, the trio of bassist Luke Stewart, drummer Chad Taylor,
and trumpet-playing-electronics-wizard Aymeric Avice gathered in Studio
Sextan-La Fonderie in Malakoff, France to make this exciting recording for
RogueArt. Having recently performed at Périscope in Lyons, France with
drummer Ramon Lopez, Stewart and Avice clearly had chemistry, and would
continue to play together with both Lopez and Taylor, including a September
2025 show at the Sons d’hiver festival, a fifteen destination event
orbiting Paris that focuses on experimental music, that year operating under
the theme of Great Black Music.
Check out part of that show here.
Deep in the Earth, High in the Sky is a high-energy event. I used
the word “exciting” above I think to refer more to how I feel when I listen
to the music than to any specific innovation on the part of the trio during
this recording. Stewart and Taylor have clearly established themselves as
two of THE masters on their respective instruments on the experimental music
scene, and here they display sharp and deeply communal listening as they
lock-in or open-up with near ESP levels of communication. A good example of
this takes place around the three-minute mark of “Pangea Suite #1,” as the
two transmute a funk-oriented rock feel into a free improvisation that
defies any kind of circular rhythm. Taylor seems to hit his ride cymbal
just one time outside of the established backbeat and the two musicians
instantaneously take off together into realms unknown.
Aymeric Avice, for his part, is just so much fun to listen to, and I fear
that I have slept on this musician. Avice is a trumpet virtuoso who lives
and plays in electro-sonic amusements. He spends much of his time on this
recording swirling and bending the pitches of his trumpet using electronic
effects. And, thanks to Avice’s electronic experimentation, often these
trumpet pitches come in harmonies wild, fierce, or even a little
frightening. “Pangea Suite #2,” for instance features space-age trumpet
electronics that can make the listener feel like they are floating in a
slightly unreal ether. Check out the three-minute-ish section of this song
to hear this levitation.
The album is clearly conceived and follows an organized layout. The opening
song is “Deep in the Earth,” book-ended by the closing composition “High in
the Sky.” Both of these works feature Chad Taylor and Luke Stewart on mbira
and are a lovely and meditative introduction and conclusion to the album as
a whole. In between these works lie three suites: Pangea Suite,
Unknown Suite, and Escaped Sounds, all of which feature
the exciting interplay of drums and bass and the electro-experiments of
Avice mentioned above.
To my ears, the album has two clear reference points. The first is
Live-Evil
or Bitches Brew era Miles Davis. There are moments in the
Unknown Suite
, for example, that if cyphoned in ten-second snippets, could have been
lifted right from one of these Miles records. “Unknown Suite #2” around
7:30 or 7:40 is evidence of this.
The other unmistakable reference point is jaimie branch. jaimie’s mark is
all over this album. I mean, goodness, listen to the same song just before
and just after the section I referenced above. Avice’s somehow both soft
and sinister distortion on the trumpet around six minutes into “Unknown
Suite #2” reminds me so much of sections of fly or die. This is to say
nothing of the opening of “Unknown Suite #3,” with its ebullient toms,
optimistic bass line and trumpet soaring overhead. Even the opening “Deep in
the Earth” uses meditative mbira playing reminiscent of some of the
beautiful breezy’s work. Of course, part of this connection is because the
drummer on this record IS the fly or die drummer.
Deep in the Earth, High in the Skyis a fun record to listen to, and
is filled with kinetic energy and intuitive interplay. At times serene and
moving and at others scorched-earth electronic, this is an album worth
checking out.
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