The News is the third album for ECM by drummer Andrew Cyrille, once the propulsive force in Cecil Taylor's groups and one of the innovators of modern jazz drumming. It follows his 2016 quartet record The Declaration of Musical Independence. This is music of space and close listening. The leader guides the band less by volume than by what the New York Times called his "watchful, flowing pulse."
Guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Ben Street return from the Declaration line-up. Pianist David Virelles, also heard on synthesizer, takes the keyboard chair that Richard Teitelbaum held on the earlier album; Teitelbaum withdrew from the sessions through illness and died in 2020. The quartet recorded in August 2019 at Sound on Sound, with Rick Kwan as engineer and Sun Chung as producer. Frisell contributes three tunes, Virelles one, Cyrille two, and one more was written by Cyrille and Virelles together.
Frisell's Mountain opens the record with country-chiming chord melody and harmonics, slowly drawn into Virelles's darker low register. The title piece goes back to a solo work Cyrille recorded in the late 1970s, played with brushes on newspapers spread over the drums. In this quartet version its crinkly textures meet free plucking from Frisell and a menacing synthesizer drone from Virelles. Leaving East of Java, by Adegoke Steve Colson, rides on Cyrille's roaming cymbals and Street's steady bass. On Virelles's Incienso the pianist stretches a gentle rattle from the drums until Frisell joins and a groove takes shape. The closing With You in Mind opens with the leader reciting a love poem to his wife before the band enters.
Reviewers heard a band that does more with less. In The Guardian John Fordham placed it "right up there among ECM Records' entrancing understatements." Kevin Le Gendre of Jazzwise wrote that Cyrille "chooses every strike of snare or crash of ride cymbal with the utmost care." Several critics noted how Frisell's bright tones and Virelles's dark chords alternate more than they overlap, which Glide Magazine said makes it read at times more like a trio album.
CD edition, ECM 2681, released in August 2021.
