Always Ever, out April 24, 2026, features Alister Spence exploring a diverse spectrum of experimental approaches and preparations on the piano.
“Spence is both imaginative and expansive, sensitive to mood and contrast, texture and melody, euphony and cacophony.” – Stuart Nicholson, Jazzwise
"Spence possesses a particular kind of vision that speaks to an original distance, whether from our usual sense of a scene as place or as constituent style, a special capacity to see through time and space to a different territory." – Stuart Broomer, The Free Jazz Collective
The title of Always Ever, the absorbing new album from Australian pianist and composer Alister Spence, suggests a wellspring of sound and inspiration that gazes beyond the present moment into the infinite. An ambitious, singular, and deeply personal collection of inventions and experiments, the album ventures further down the path the pianist began with his acclaimed 2020 release Whirlpool, hailed by All About Jazz as “a good place to hear [Spence’s] uncommon imagination at work.”
Out April 24, 2026, Always Ever consists of 16 wholly improvised pieces, each approaching the piano from a distinct perspective. Some highlight the improvisational versatility that has made Spence one of Australia’s preeminent jazz pianists since his days with the internationally renowned Clarion Fracture Zone; others transform the instrument’s sonic possibilities through eclectic preparations and unconventional techniques.
“Over time,” Spence explains, “the playing of the piano for me has expanded to encompass the whole piano, more than just playing the keys. I'm interested in contingency. I'm interested in accidents and what they cause to happen in the music, and I deliberately try to create those accidents for myself.”
Whirlpool marked the beginning of an investigatory new chapter in Spence’s nearly four-decade career—his first solo outing and an introduction to a broader palette of approaches to the instrument. With Always Ever, he delves deeper into that exploration, documenting an ongoing process of discovery into the boundless possibilities of a piano he has played his entire life.
He traces the roots of this approach back to his time with Clarion Fracture Zone, a group known for blending emerging sampling technology with diverse jazz traditions. During one session, saxophonist Tony Gorman encouraged Spence to channel the abstract energy of Cecil Taylor—an invitation that proved transformative.
“Everything we'd done up to that point had been fairly conventional,” Spence recalls. “I had never been asked to do anything like that before, and I just had the most fun with it. That experience inspired me to follow my ears and my intuition about what pleases me sound-wise, and slowly bled more and more into my practice.”
That spirit of experimentation has taken many forms over the decades. Alongside a prolific career composing for film and television, Spence has pursued a range of adventurous collaborations: a long-running partnership with Japanese pianist and composer Satoko Fujii; a trio with drummer Toby Hall and bassist Lloyd Swanton of The Necks; and a quartet iteration featuring guitarist Ed Kuepper, co-founder of the influential proto-punk band The Saints.
In recent years, however, his solo work has become one of the most fertile outlets for his sonic imagination. “I've long been interested in the color of sound,” he says. “When I play the piano, I'm often just as interested in what happens from a so-called mistake as I am in the more conventional piano note sound. My goal is to break with preconceptions and to just be in the moment as much as possible.”
Always Ever unfolds as sixteen concise improvisations, each a distinct line of inquiry. The album opens with the percussive “Mystic,” resonating with muted string strikes, followed by the restless, shifting currents of “Determination.” From there, contrasts abound: the shimmering insistence of “Play of Light” against the metallic textures of “Distant Cousins”; the Cecil Taylor–inspired abstraction of “Afternoon at Ranscom Street” (named for the Sydney studio where the album was recorded) set alongside the meditative drones of “Begin from the Middle.” The emotional terrain spans the stark, pointillist beauty of “Searchlight,” the wiry spirals of “Rain Dance,” and the aptly titled clamor of “Scrape Rattle Strike.”
A composer of remarkable sensitivity and scope, Spence embraces uncertainty throughout Always Ever, allowing chance and intuition to guide the music in real time. “I do things throughout this album where I'm only broadly aware of how they’re going to sound,” he says. “So much is just open to the moment… Even if I'm playing the piano more conventionally, I try to deliberately make myself go off track so that I’m not able to guess what's going to happen as a result. It’s so exciting to work my way into and out of that situation.”
That sense of unpredictability is precisely what makes Always Ever so compelling. It’s an album that captures not just sound, but the thrill of discovery itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment