Album Review: Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith - A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke

Writer Shea Serrano had a really good tweet the other day: “I wish I knew more about jazz—when I listen to it I’m just like 'Ooh, horns make me happy, also the piano is dope. Wow is that a tuba I hear?'" That kind of sums up my relatively limited experience with the genre that I’ve only dabbled in ever so slightly over about half of my life.

Most of the jazz that I have listened to, thus far, has all been pretty straightforward—the more accessible works of Miles Davis, the very commercial Wynton Marsalis, A Love Supreme—so something like the free-formed dissonance of A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke from Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith didn’t come so much as a shock to the system, but it is also not the kind of thing that I would not toss on during a dinner party.

Listening to Cosmic Rhythm sometimes feels like you are stuck in some kind of fog drenched film noir that you can’t seem to find your way out of—and I mean that in the best way possible. It can be all at once somber and mournful, but also mysterious and kind of haunting. There are moments where it is gorgeous, and feels like it is on the verge of finding its direction, or at least temporarily eases into a musical idea but then the meandering dissonance creeps back in, taking the piece in a completely different direction.

I feel like with jazz, specifically with this style of jazz, you can be of any level of intelligence to appreciate it, but you have to be really, really intelligent to understand it; and I’m just not smart enough to truly discern the complexities of Cosmic Rhythm, but I am smart enough to appreciate it, and at least take something away from it when I listen.

Obviously not the kind of record to put on at any ol’ time of day, or in any situation (I tried listening to this in my cubicle at work, which was probably a mistake) Cosmic Rhythm is also a real headphone record—you’ll want to hear all the subtleties like the electronic flourishes on “All Becomes Alive” or the rumbling low end frequencies of “A Divine Courage.”

Much like reading David Foster Wallace, or watching an art film in another language, listening to this record requires complete concentration, and will hopefully make you feel at least a little bit smarter when you come out the other end. Despite its idiosyncratic nature at times, A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke is an imaginative and a worthy listen, even for someone with just a passing interest in jazz as a genre as well as an art form.

A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke is available now on ECM.