Featuring Isaiah Collier, Keyon Harrold, Jasbir Jassi, Aaron Parks, Linda Sikhakhane, Carlos Niño, Jeff Bhasker + More
Out September 18 Via Gearbox Records
“Drummer Franklin Kiermyer is that rare jazzman – blessed with the ecstatic quality of his free-bop attack.”
–Rolling Stone
“Kiermyer plays (and composes) with an almost evangelical belief in jazz as a form of pure inspiration.”
–Entertainment Weekly
“Kiermyer supercharges spiritual modality… he plays with volcanic authority.”
–DownBeat
Today, spiritual drummer, composer and bandleader Franklin Kiermyer returns with the announcement of his eleventh album Scatter The Atoms That Remain, out September 18 via London/Tokyo analog specialists Gearbox Records (Knats, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonius Monk, Abdullah Ibrahim). To mark the announcement, he has shared the first single to be taken from the record, “One Is Love.”
Kiermyer is perhaps best known for his work with the late great saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, they released the volcanic spiritual jazz album Solomon’s Daughter together (also featuring John Esposito and Drew Gress) in 1994. As music journalist Marcus J. Moore says in the new album’s liner notes, “At face value, that sentence isn’t so rebellious. But when you consider when the album was released – almost 30 years after Pharoah, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler helped pioneer this explosive style of experimental music – the LP properly recalled a time when artists sought peace through this art. Perhaps on purpose, Solomon’s Daughter seemed indebted to that era of vast experimentation. Putting that out in the ‘90s took courage; this type of music wasn’t so popular with rap and R&B dominating the musical landscape. Or maybe Kiermyer never really cared about such arbitrary notions anyway.”
Herein lies the lynchpin in Kiermyer’s career and this new album. The music has never been about revisiting the past. It has always been about discovering, through sound, what remains possible. His fierce independence, his perseverance, and the heavy dues he’s paid to nurture this music is a testament to uncompromising artistic purity and commitment. This has resulted in him flying somewhat under the radar for much of his career, instead becoming something of a cult figure, lauded by press and his fellow musicians alike for his visceral intensity and liberating catharsis – raw, communal, and driven by absolute focus, lifetime dedication, and profound artistic risk.
Scatter The Atoms That Remain – his project dedicated to “the power of transformative spiritual music” – continues to drive this forward. The album brings in an array of jazz iconoclasts, including Isaiah Collier, Keyon Harrold, Jasbir Jassi, Aaron Parks, Linda Sikhakhane, Carlos Niño, Jeff Bhasker, and more, to create an album that burns white hot with passion. An act of resistance that touches on topics such as the state of our world and the socio and geo-political landscape, but one that ultimately resolves in love, tenderness, and meditative understanding.
The first taste of this new album comes in the form of “One Is Love.” Centered around a poem written by Kiermyer, the track sees him and saxophonist Isaiah Collier dancing amongst each other’s fervent, explosive lines, while piano and bass from Davis Whitfield and Otto Gardner add drama and poignant emotion. The instruments weave between tension and harmony before coming together in the final section as all the performers and the Temitope Momorebe Gospel Singers come together to sing “One is Love – Love is One.”
Speaking on the single, Kiermyer says “Soon after we started working on this album, I decided to try writing simple lyrics to better engage with the world. After recording this piece, untitled, I wrote this poem. After mixing what we recorded, I thought to use these lyrics for this song. I tried various vocal arrangements but finally decided on a choir comprised of the musicians who played on the session, as well as the Temitope Momorebe Gospel Singers all singing only the first line of the poem “One is Love – Love is One.” Every interpretation of the meaning of this statement that I can uncover and the poem in its entirety, I fully support with my heart.
Kiermyer’s life has unfolded with periods of touring and recording alternating with periods – sometimes long – of concentrated research & development and long periods of focused spiritual practice. Meditation and study have been a constant since Kiermyer’s teens. Over the years, opportunities to meet and learn from some of the greatest teachers of Vajrayana Buddhism helped inform and motivate his development, but it was at the middle-age of 42 that he met an older Tibetan master from Kham who would be his main teacher. In him, he perceived the depth and openness at the source of all great music. As the relation deepened, he would ask for instructions on how to practice. As he progressed, the instructions became more and more direct and challenging. Following this path, Franklin Kiermyer would spend most of the next ten years focused mainly on meditation and practice, much of this in remote solitary retreats in the Himalayas and other parts of Southeast Asia.
Speaking on his experiences, Kiermyer continues to say “as a child, I was dissatisfied with much of the ways I was taught to experience reality. For example, it was explained that everything was made of matter as distinct from mind and spirit and this struck me as false. At the same time, I had a strong feeling that we were here to do something important, but I didn’t really know what. Amidst all this somewhat uncomfortable doubt and questioning, I was hearing music and felt safe there. Music made sense because I felt it. It changed me.”
Looking back over his career and at this new album, it’s fair to say that Kiermyer’s sense of inquisition and disdain for “the norm” has been a driving factor not only in his spirituality and consciousness but also in his musicality. He continues, “records like Transition, Sun Ship and First Meditations became great inspirations for me. This felt like real spiritual music – a spiritual practice of using honesty and faith to transcend concepts and get to the heart of things. I didn’t really think of it as jazz. This openness, honesty and faith became my goal. I felt that if I could share that feeling of freedom, reverence and awe, I’d be doing something worthwhile. I knew that I’d have a long road if I went this route, but I was sure that it was what I should do. I’m still trying to reach that level of musical experience. Of course, I’ve battled with a lot of discouragement and doubt along the way, but I think that’s helped strengthen my heart.”
Kiermyer has never lost the fire, that wide-eyed curiosity and drive to delve beyond the canvas that he was provided with. After decades of unwavering commitment to this path, Scatter the Atoms That Remain now finds Kiermyer on the great wide-open. Those in the know see where it’s coming from, those that are brave see where it’s going.
Scatter the Atoms That Remain Track Listing
1. One Is Love
2. As Above, So Below
3. Bayaka Mosambo
4. Maombi
5. Clairvoyance
6. The Truth Is Just An Echo
7. Electric Sunshine
8. This Spirit
9. Espresso
10. False Prophets
