Franklin Kiermyer Shares ‘As Above, So Below’ from New Album ‘Scatter the Atoms That Remain’
Franklin Kiermyer has shared ‘As Above, So Below,’ a new track from ‘Scatter the Atoms That Remain’, his first album in seven years. The record is out September 18th on Gearbox Records.
The track brings together Kiermyer with Keyon Harrold on trumpet, Linda Sikhakhane on soprano saxophone, Davis Whitfield on piano and Géraud Portal on bass, with vocals by Jasbir Jassi.
Asked about the title, Kiermyer explained: “‘As Above, So Below’ is a line from the ‘Emerald Tablet’ by Hermes Trismegistus, the father of Western alchemy. It describes the principle of Correspondence — that the same patterns repeat across every level of reality: energetic, natural and spiritual. That describes how this music uses the physics of vibration to transcend the physical realm.
Most of the performance was recorded in Jakarta, while Jassi’s part came later at Fort Sufi in Big Sur. That sort of distance runs through the album. ‘Scatter the Atoms That Remain’ was made across several sessions and locations, with musicians appearing in different combinations rather than as one group. It makes sense for Kiermyer, as his records have long been built around improvisation. Meditation and Buddhist practice have also been part of his life since he was young, and that search has never really been separate from the way he plays. That was already very clear on ‘Solomon’s Daughter’, his 1994 album with Pharoah Sanders, and later on records such as ‘Auspicious Blazing Sun’. The new album comes from the same impulse, although the music has moved somewhere else again. There are voices all over the record, unexpected combinations of players and a much wider range of textures. Isaiah Collier, Aaron Parks, Carlos Niño, Keyon Harrold, Ra Kalam Bob Moses, Jeff Bhasker and others all appear.
‘As Above, So Below’ is one of the album’s strongest examples of how naturally all of those different strands can meet.
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