Recorded live at New York’s Context Studios on May 20, 1996 and only released in 2026, Keeping It In Context captures four key figures of the post‑Loft free‑jazz continuum in an environment that could hardly be more apt. The title nods to both the studio and the music’s genealogy: a reminder that what Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, William Parker and Lou Grassi are doing here doesn’t appear out of nowhere, but grows out of decades of experiment in basements, storefronts and small rooms across the city. All compositions are collectively credited, underlining that what you hear is a group mind at work rather than a leader plus sidemen.
The instrumentation sets up a front line that’s as flexible as it is fiery. Carter moves between alto and tenor saxophones, flute and trumpet; Mateen mirrors him on alto and tenor saxophones, flute and clarinet. This mirroring creates endless possibilities: gritty, Ayler‑shaded unisons that suddenly split, alto–tenor contrasts that twist around each other, limpid flute dialogues hovering over a barely there rhythm. Parker’s bass, a central force in New York creative music for decades, provides both bedrock and counter‑melody, walking or bowing with a tone that can shift from cavernous to violin‑like in a bar. Grassi’s drums and percussion keep things in constant motion, his time feel elastic enough to let the horns stretch but exact enough that the music never drifts into vagueness.
The pieces unfold as long arcs rather than head‑solo‑head vehicles. On tracks like “The Surface of No Strain”, released in advance as a teaser, the quartet starts from a small, almost hesitant gesture and gradually builds intensity without any external cue beyond shared listening. A fragment of melody will surface, be worried at from different angles, then either combust into collective fire or dissolve into a new texture. Carter might switch from trumpet to alto mid‑flow, shifting the colour from burnished brass to serrated reed; Mateen may answer with clarinet, threading a narrower, more vocal line through the growing storm. Parker’s bass often acts as the hinge between abstraction and song, implying harmonic centres even when the horns have long since abandoned fixed changes. Grassi uses cymbal scrapes, tom‑rolls and sudden snare cracks less as “accompaniment” than as commentary, constantly re‑phrasing the beat.
What keeps Keeping It In Context compelling from start to finish is the quartet’s refusal to treat “free” as an excuse to ignore structure. There is swing here, even when it’s fragmented; there is blues feeling in the way pitches bend and smear; there are echoes of marches, fanfares and street‑corner riffs in some of the themes that briefly coalesce before being pulled apart. The context they’re keeping faith with is a tradition where experimentation and rootedness are not opposites but mutually reinforcing. Carter and Mateen carry forward the lesson that avant‑garde horns can shout, moan and testify as directly as any hard‑bop soloist; Parker continues to show how the bass can be both engine and poet; Grassi exemplifies a drummer’s role as co‑architect of form, not just timekeeper.
The release itself bears the mark of careful archival work. Issued by NoBusiness Records as part of its ongoing excavation of under‑documented free‑jazz corners, the album is mastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios, preserving the grain of the original tape while giving each instrument clear presence in the stereo field. A cover painting, “VERTAS” by Martynas Ivinskas, and photography by Karen Tweedy‑Holmes frame the music visually, evoking both its abstraction and its rooted, human scale. Produced by Danas Mikailionis and released on May 1, 2026, Keeping It In Context arrives less as a nostalgia piece than as a newly unearthed dispatch: evidence that in a cramped New York room in 1996, four musicians were already doing what younger players are still striving for today - listening without ego, trusting the moment, and letting the context play through them.
