Hypercube - 2025 - The Force for Good

(28:38; Neuma Records)

Track list:
1. Hout [Louis Andriessen] 10:24
2. The Force for Good [Michael Fiday] 18:14

Line-up:
Erin Rogers - saxophone
Jay Sorce - guitars
Andrea Lodge - piano
Chris Graham - percussion 


US ensemble Hypercube have been a feature in the US music scene for a decade or thereabouts from what I understand, with a number of live performances to their name in addition to releasing two studio albums as of 2025. The most recent of these, "The Force for Good", appeared in the spring of 2025 through US label Neuma Records.

While I guess that the landscapes explored on this production could be described in a number of different manners, I suspect that experimental music would be my primary choice here, and if a specific style and tradition were to be called for I'd probably say that jazz is the primary voice here and that impulses from classical music probably are present too. 

This quartet have chosen to navigate fairly challenging territories on this production, which consists of two long compositions clocking in at the 10 minute mark and the 18 minute mark respectively. They are fairly different from one another too, and it is easy to tell that these are the works of two different composers.

The opening composition 'Hout' starts with a start and stop structure that I would also describe as featuring a call and answer expression, with the four instrumentalists delivering expressive motifs and patterns from their respective instruments. This develops into a cohesive, flowing excursion, with the expressive attitudes being very much in place as fluctuating and circulating patterns transports us towards the end in a little bit of a chaotic state.

The following title track 'The Force for Good' follows a rather different trajectory. Opening with careful sounds that gradually grow and develop into a flowing motion that then moves on to a dissonant phase. Following this initial dramatic peak we get an elongated phase with careful, borderline ambient sounds gradually developing towards searching and flowing motions that develop, ebb and flow, and then grow towards a more chaotic, intense and dissonant eruption in the end phase. 

This is an album, or perhaps mini-album due to the total playtime, that explore landscapes of a more unconventional nature. Expressive attitudes and instrument details of a more unusual and challenging nature is what we get here, with the compositions also shifting and turning in sometimes subtle and sometimes more overt unusual manners and with less common trajectories. The kind of music that makes phrases like experimental and avantgarde come across as very much appropriate, at least for listeners not used to exploring the kind of musical ground covered by this quartet. And while this is a bit of a new ground to explore for me as well, one of the subjective impressions I get when listening to this material is that this quartet does make use of some movements and developments that may have more of a classical music origin, but flavor them with sounds and instrument details pulled in from the jazz tradition. I'm not a music theorist though, so these are merely thoughts and associations I get as a mere listener.

For my sake I'd say that those with an interest in the more challenging aspects of jazz probably will be a bit of a key audience for this album, alongside those with a general affection for instrumental music with a more defined experimental and expressive sound and orientation. Possibly with those who are fond of the more avantgarde corners of the classical music universe being another demographic that might find this album to be an interesting one.

Olav M. Björnsen, June 2025

Links:
https://www.hypercubemusic.org/
https://neumarecords.org/