By Ed Enright | Published April 2025
Veteran drummer Phil Haynes, a prolific composer and improviser who’s been featured on nearly 90 releases from myriad American and European labels (including his own Corner Store Jazz imprint), pairs up with two of his longtime collaborators — electric guitarist Steve Salerno and upright bassist Drew Gress — on the visceral new recording Return To Electric. The album not only reconnects Haynes with old friends from his two decades spent living and working in New York, but it also fulfills a long-held dream of making a fusion album — one that ultimately serves as a vehicle for nostalgic yet progressive time-travel back to the genre’s early experimental days, awash in the edgy, iconic sounds of the electric guitar that captivated and inspired him as a youth coming of age in Oregon. The trio takes on fusion classics by Wayne Shorter (“Paraphernalia”), Chick Corea (“Crystal Silence”), John McLaughlin (“Spectrum” and “Lotus On Irish Springs”) and George Russell (“Living Time”), alongside repurposed Haynes originals and a trio of short improvised solo “Cadenzas” by each member of the band. Passages of free-improv play abound on Return To Electric, whose 13 modest-length tracks seldom stick to any one groove or stay on any particular tack for very long. Unrestrained by strict song forms, the music shifts with an organic feel, touching on everything from ethereal atmospherics and hard-hitting rip-and-crunch to old-school funk grooves, easygoing swing diversions and a sparse, exploratory “sandbox” approach to group improvisation. Another, simultaneous new release, Transition(s), marks the debut of Haynes in a duo configuration co-led with guitarist Ben Monder, a fellow seeker on the New York downtown scene a quarter-century ago who semi-regularly teamed up with the drummer for informal improv sessions that almost always culminated in a meditation on “Transition,” the title track from John Coltrane’s posthumously released 1970 album. Here, the tune serves as the guiding star for a set of airy, spacious art pieces — at times amorphous and atmospheric, at others tense and urgent or lyrical and weightless, all of it built upon a still-vital, telepathy-like stream of communication that was, in retrospect, long overdue for a reawakening.
