Reach Out (LP) by Envisage Collective

In the aptly-titled “Envisage,” one of the eight songs available to us on the new album Reach Out from jazz collaborators Envisage Collective, melodies come slipping out of the darkness like shadows beneath the city lights, luring listeners into a haze of scattered harmonies that are dreamlike and lush (to put it quite mildly). As tends to be the case with all of the tracks here, Envisage Collective put the tone of their instrumental prowess before any egomaniacal showboating, thus allowing their audience to enjoy the fruits of a complicated labor in jazz experimentation without our having to sift through any annoying filler.

BANDCAMP: https://envisagecollective.bandcamp.com/releases

There’s a wonderful conflict that develops between the sax parts and the piano in “Habitat” that instantly turns up the tension in the song before turning us over to a jittery ebbtide of percussion seemingly designed to extend the unsettling tone of the music without exploiting the discordant harmony any further. While wholly cerebral and a bit more complex than it needed to be (at least in my view), this kind of an approach is perhaps what makes the music of Reach Out as provocative as it is; even without lyrics, Envisage Collective are finding a channel of communication in every track here.

The drums could have been just a bit louder in the mix than they ultimately are in “Malta House,” but at the same time, I can understand what the band was trying to demonstrate in keeping them in the background for this tune. Unlike “Step on a Crack” and “Wish,” “Malta House” – and, to a lesser extent, “The Closer” – depend on melodic faceting to emphasize the swing of the rhythm almost exclusively, and had the percussive parts been given any more oomph, I suppose I can see where Envisage Collective might have run the risk of making the music feel a little too weighty in the grander scheme of things.

I would have started the tracklist off with “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “Envisage” over the title cut, but only for the purposes of making the flow here just a bit more rigid than it is in this instance. Obviously, having a progressive fluidity definitely makes it harder to put down Reach Out once it’s been picked up for the first time, but as a lifelong jazz fan, I can also appreciate the grandeur that a slightly jagged arrangement of material would have created for this LP.

CD BABY: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/envisagecollective

It’s admittedly a little rougher around the edges in some spots than other independent jazz releases currently making headlines stateside are, but all in all, fans of the genre should be more than pleased with what Envisage Collective are submitting in this brand new album. Reach Out doesn’t ask a whole lot out of us in exchange for a wealth of harmonic gems that aren’t all that commonly found on the Billboard charts anymore, and if you’re in the mood for some jubilant jazz play, its eight unique songs should provide you more than enough intrigue to last the spring season.

Mark Druery