Album Review: Onyx Collective - Lower East Suite Part Three

It's become somewhat typical to judge albums on an initial listen; even just a handful of songs.

Onyx Collective's Lower East Suite Part Three doesn't really lend itself to that approach. And, unusually, not because it's an especially long album like some recent jazz releases, it's just opaque.

The group's debut album was recorded cheap, dirty and DIY with a static ensemble, following two releases and a couple of years of spontaneous, revolving line-ups. The production is dry and subtly coarse - halfway between classically warm and outright aggressive. The melodies on display are rarely hummable. Similarly, the grooves are often heavy, unwieldy things. So, an immediate listen will leave many grasping for some manner of hook or entry point. 

But, with subsequent listens, appreciation inevitably deepens. It becomes easier to tune into the uneasy sense of cinema that permeates the work. The heavy sense of space becomes intoxicating. There's something otherworldly in how tunes shift briefly into something atonal and chaotic; like the music is spilling out of vessels. It's difficult to sum up exactly what engages in the work, but there's definitely more than the hard surfaces immediately suggest.