Mind Screen by Emergency Group

The newest phase for Emergency Group might not seem terribly radical to some, but Mind Screen spins the Brooklyn quartet in quietly exciting new directions as they channel their thrilling high-wire improv into their first extended studio visit. For starters (and closers), Mind Screen begins and ends with songs. An improv unit from their very first February 2020 session (just in time to not play again for over a year), the band hadn’t resisted composed material so much as never tried it. When the group entered Brooklyn’s Figure 8 in July 2023, it was with a pair of tunes and the gentle guidance of Chris Schlarb, also their first time working with a producer.

The soaring noir of the title track (by keyboardist Robert Boston) and the bolero ballad “Julien” (by guitarist Jonathan Byerley, for his young son) both zoom in on aspects of the band’s collectively developed voice, channeling the possibilities of improv into (slightly) more fixed spaces. The tunes act as bookends for the core of the Figure 8 session, a pair of more “typical” Emergency Group adventures, if anything could be said to be typical of a band that’s only really been in active existence a little over two years. Which it can’t.

It would feel slightly wrong using the word “chance” anywhere in a description of the Emergency Group’s improvisations if not for the visceral sensation I get whenever I’ve seen them perform live of something unseen being thrown into the air and breaking apart in the moment that they start to play. Or, rather, the feeling I get in the expectant half-second before they start to play, because then everything goes into motion, pulses colliding and overlapping and interlocking and generating new ideas. But on Mind Screen’s two extended pieces, the feeling is less of propulsion but of a quartet floating back together with intention into gentler orbits, of picking from the possibilities without losing a sense of adventure or the sense that everything could suddenly lose momentum and turn back into empty air.

“What’s Yours Is Mine” isn’t a ballad so much as a mode played in 9 (at the suggestion of bassist Dave Mandl), a drifting late-night mood that finds tenderness in small internal dialogues. And even on “Spirit Logic” where the Group finds heat, steered into form by drummer Andreas Brade, they break again into star-stuff. During the extended denouement (en route to “Julien”), Mind Screen reveals the warmth of Emergency Group in repose, a bed of tones and confident uncertainty, taking a breath before turning the next corner.

–Jesse Jarnow, Brooklyn, New York

"Inspection of Cruelty careens toward the heart of deep space, powered by the internal combustion of Emergency Group’s fearless and freewheeling improvisational prowess. If you’ve ever pondered what it might sound like if Can took a stab at “Dark Star,” this one’s for you" - Aquarium Drunkard