Blind Io is a transatlantic, free improvising quartet founded by Belgian versatile drummer Teun Verbruggen and featuring the unusual line-up of idiosyncratic impovisers from different backgrounds- Japan-born, New york-based electronics wizard Ikue Mori, of the pioneer no wave band DNA, and a close collaborator of John Zorn; German-born, Brooklyn-based soprano and tenor sax player-composer-bandleader Ingrid Laubrock, known for her work with Anthony Braxton, her own bands, and her duo with partner-drummer Tom Rainey; and fellow Belgian jazz pianist Bram De Looze, who has an intelligent, analytical insight into the form and architecture of music (and has played with Verbruggen in the Chasing Penguins band).
The debut album of Blind Io was recorded in 2023 and was released by Verbruggen’s label, RAT Records. Its title references English writer Terry Pratchett’s Discworld universe (an interstellar planet-sized disc, which sits on the backs of four huge elephants, themselves standing on the back of a world turtle, named Great A’Tuin, as it slowly swims through space), Sanskrit rasa’s (the aesthetic essences of pieces of art) and astronomical phenomena (a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that depicts elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula of the Serpens constellation, some 6 500–7 000 light-years from Earth).
Pillars of Creation (part 1) is a careful and inquisitive study of in collective sound sculpting aiming to create multi-layered but egalitarian explorations of sound, free-form textures, and space. Despite the strong individual identities, Blind Io has developed its unique synergy that encourages the four musicians to blend their voices and contrast, enhance and inspire each other. The sonic palette of this quartet becomes richer and unpredictable as the album progresses and visits more unchartered, otherworldly territories but these adventurous, risk-taking journeys are spiced with enigmatic, electroacoustic grooves. At first listening, Laubrock and De Looze sound as if gravitating Blind Io into free jazz melodies, and sometimes even emotional and lyrical structures while Mori and Verbruggen push for edgy rhythmic patterns and often to more abstract soundscapes. But as Guy Peters observed in his liner notes, these four kindred spirits move around each other in a restless reconfiguration of roles. Peters calls it “space travel for the mind”.
Eyal Hareuveni
Ingrid Laubrock (saxophone), Bram De Looze (piano), Ikue Mori (electronics), Teun Verbruggen (drums)
