The band emerged organically, out of deep friendships, mutual admiration, ad hoc formations, and a shared activist concern for the beloved legacy of all Black life and culture. International in scope yet indebted to, influenced by, and committed to their specific communities, the band pulls zero punches and reserves no energy in intrepid live sets that proclaim revolutionary love for the people.
Irreversible Entanglements⤬
Irreversible Entanglements are a band who cultivate the liberation technologies of jazz and associated Black music - root, stem, and branch - into the future.
'And while Irreversible Entanglements draws on that tradition, they aren’t merely mimicking an older version of jazz. They are making it resonate now, emphasizing it as a music of ritual, much like Ayewa’s other loves, like gospel and blues. It conveys all of the urgency of her raw, earlier work now across a greater vista, untethered by time yet wholly in the present.' — PITCHFORK
'It’s a harrowing listen, and one of the most powerful and relevant works of art you’ll encounter this year' THE QUIETUS
The Philadelphia, New York, and DC-based band is made up of five individuals whose uncompromising artistic visions have received wide acclaim. Poet Camae Ayewa, a/k/a Moor Mother, is a legendarily prolific, globally leading light of Afrofuturist music, art, and community activism. Bassist Luke Stewart is deservedly his generation’s most in-demand musician on that instrument, who from his work as a radio and concert presenter boasts an encyclopedic knowledge of the music from which he draws with focused and thunderous intensity. Saxophonist Keir Neuringer’s prodigious avantgarde technique is matched by an urgency in his tone and fierce socio-political determination. Trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes joined the band as an already long-standing duo, bringing with them uncontainable energy and inventiveness grounded in classic jazz and Latin and Afro-Carribbean streams.
'Ayewa’s words—which are furious, but delivered with seething rage rather than showy howls—add to the intensity until it’s almost too much to take. This album will make you clench your fists' STEREOGUM