VIJAY IYER TRIO "Break Stuff" (ECM)

Placid, dark piano tones open “Starlings,” the first of a dozen tunes on Vijay Iyer’s newest album, and his first with ECM with his 11-year-old trio. This is a real unit, with Marcus Gilmore’s dynamic drumbeats and cymbal-shimmers and Stephan Crump’s spare bass thrummings thoroughly embedding in the mix led by pianist Iyer. The long intro to “Chorale” is appropriately stately and natty, but it also has an air of suspense; then the trio breaks into a much knottier, densely creative groove. This track and the album’s three bird-themed tunes (”Geese” and “Wrens” are the two besides the album’s first song) had their origins in a suite Iyer presented — in collaboration with 19 instrumentalists and the novelist Teju Cole — after winning a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. On “Diptych,” the leader treads fascinating harmonic territories that include discrete melodic statements; small, tangled clusters; clear multinote arpeggios; and occasional minimalistic moments against Crump’s busy thumping and Gilmore’s incessant, off-kilter rhythm. “Hood,” complex, open, and hypnotic, is reminiscent of Terry Riley’s In C. It’s fascinating listening to any one of the three musicians, but their totality is close to transcendent. The title track is a good place to pay attention to the album’s seemingly quizzical theme. As Iyer says in the liner notes, “A break in music is still music: a span of time in which to act.” While not always accessible — the relationships here to blues and swing can be quite abstract — Break Stuff is physical, intuitive, intellectual, and emotional. That is, it’s exciting.