Douglas R. Ewart, Kyle Hutchins, Seth Andrew Davis, Kevin Cheli – See You in the Past (Mother Brain Records, 2025)

By Nick Ostrum

See You in the Pastis a meeting of generations. On the one side are Kyle Hutchins on saxophones, Seth Andrew Davis on guitar and electronics, and Kevin Cheli on percussion and vibraphone, all three young(er) and associated with various Midwestern scenes. On the other side is Douglas R. Ewart, here on saxophones, flutes, and George Floyd Bunt Staff . Ewart, of course, was an early AACM member and has since become multi-reedist+ legend even after departing Chicago for Minneapolis. This grouping succeeds not only in blending scenes and rough cohorts, but in layering the old (or ancestral or atavistic) and the new (or electronic futurism) convincingly. One need not take such a polarity too literally, of course. Electronics is hardly new to Ewart’s circles. However, here it sounds not like Sun Ra’s Moog or even George Lewis’ experiments, but like a more contemporary – astral prog crossed with ambient and particularist noise making – iteration.

Together, Ewart, Hutchins, Davis, and Cheli harness a large sound, which, even in the quiet moments, occupies considerable space. Ewart’s spirituality and earthiness is a clear thread, but it sounds different in the context of the electronics and long stretches of wall-of-sound production. Most often, Ewart or Hutchins fight through the downpour that Davis and Cheli (and I think Hutchins and Ewart, when on his George Floyd Bunt Staff) conjure. Actually, it is tough to decipher when Ewart or Hutchins steps up and the others scape and scrape the sound from behind. Many passages veer even further from the free jazz stylings one might expect into noise rock and the most abstract moments of the Grateful Dead’s Space/Drums jams. Indeed, See You in the Past is more interested in suspended and extended moments, rather than progressive development. There are exceptions. Future Ghosts, at 7:43 the shortest of the three tracks, is a scorcher. It is a free for all from the beginning and the energy does not ebb until the final moments. Still, the other selections, Echoes of Tomorrow and Sound Seekers, subdue the quartet’s most eruptive impulses. It is in these longer stretches that this group shows what they can really achieve, as they not only find their sound, but probe it, stretch it, and turn it inside out to utterly mesmerizing effect.

See You in the Past is available on Bandcamp as a CD and download: 

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