Reviewed: Tyshawn Sorey’s Koan

Koan
Tyshawn Sorey
482 Music

Young avant-garde jazz drummer Tyshawn Sorey’s stunning new disc contains little drumming and even less jazz, but plenty of avant-garde. Koan is a minimalist project primarily for guitar and bass that moves slowly and plainly, like a sonic desert landscape;  it makes its points with stark texture and in-the-moment harmonies that linger far beyond the moment of creation. Like the Zen mystical element for which the record is named, Koan is a meditative musing that taps into both the brain and the spirit, perplexes both, and mesmerizes them anyway.