Reuben Lewis, Adam Halliwell

Elations Recordings presents Return of the Airpoets, an exploratory recording from longtime collaborators Reuben Lewis and Adam Halliwell, occupying a unique space between contemporary experimental music and avant jazz. Engineered and mixed by Reuben Lewis in 2023, and featuring guest appearances from acclaimed Australian drummer Ronny Ferella. Return of the Airpoets continues a conversation begun with "Cygon Dance", an extended duo between Lewis and Halliwell from Halliwell's 2023 LP Freedom Lapse; a dialogue that stems from a shared love and respect for Jon Hassell's Fourth World music. Sonic pioneer and adventurer, Hassell's futuristic vision advocated possible musics, stressing plurality and multiplicity.

Faithful to his vision, Adam and Reuben, as trailblazers rather than imitators, delight in boundless musical possibilities, adopting Hassell's futurism as stock-in-trade, making it their own while augmented with neo noir hues and hints of the tilted electro-funk of Miles Davis' collaborations with Marcus Miller. These nine tracks flow together as a unified suite, their shadowy presence stitched from fractured narratives: imaginary crimes, murders, dreams, the unspoken. At the same time, you can detect the artists' meticulous attention to sonic detail, feel the undercurrents, the complex layering. This music has been distilled, winnowed, from extended improv sessions, with the artists -- as producers -- zeroing in on offcuts, shards, and splinters, seamlessly patching together fragments in post-production to construct intricately layered sound collages, taking a leaf out of Tao Macero's book, building from the ground up.