Sam Anning

Earthen

Earshift Music

Melbourne, Australia’s bassist, and composer Sam Anning delivers his third septet album with Earthen, a tribute to indigenous Australian music icon, Uncle Archie Roach. The album brims with gorgeous, cinematic soundscapes and is especially noteworthy as a jazz tribute to Roach who was an award-winning singer-songwriter, musician, and respected elder. His songs told impactful stories about Indigenous Australian experiences, with an emphasis akin to our own Native Americans, the pain associated with what is termed the Stolen Generations. Roach was known for his themes of loss, resilience, hope, and spiritual healing.  Anning was especially close to Roach, having been his bassist for the three years prior to his passing in 2022.

The driving impetus for the record likely peaked in Roach’s final days. Anning and Stephen Magnusson were gathered around Roach’s bed in the ICU and were playing their instruments softly as the singer-songwriter communed with his family. After joining the two in singing, Roach said “This hospital gives me medicine, which is good, but THIS (the music) is the medicine I need.” Pointing to Anning’s bass and Magnusson’s guitar, he said, “This is earthenware, and this is earthenware. They are made from the earth, music comes from the earth and these instruments carry it, and it goes back to the earth.”

Anning’s septet is Mat Jodrell (trumpet), Carl Mackey (alto saxophone), Julien Wilson (tenor saxophone, electronics), Andrea Keller (piano, Wurlitzer), Theo Carbo (electric and acoustic guitars), Sam Anning (double bass, compositions), and Kyrie Anderson (drums). “Rise Up Lights” begins the album as a kind of brief overture, melancholy in tone, with Jodrell’s trumpet soaring as the septet plays in unison. Pianist Keller also comes to the fore with her judiciously well-placed notes and later we grow accustomed to the deep synergy between her and the leader. “Strangers” stays in a deeply reverential timbre but turns more ethereal as electronics mesh with the acoustic instruments. The septet is adept at creating drama and intrigue and there’s a spaciousness to these compositions, again carried most vividly by Jodrell’s trumpet. “Hard Light” plays as a meditative interlude, buoyed by Carbo’s guitar chords and Anderson’s zephyr-like cymbal flourishes.

Wilson’s tenor is the featured voice in “Transitive States,” which quickly morphs to bizarre, spacey electronics and seems a bit out of place except for its quiet tones that are in synch with the previous tracks. When the other horns enter it becomes dissonant and even edgier.  The septet gathers some momentum, albeit the slow, plodding kind, for “Kicking Not Screaming” with pianist Keller assuming the focal point in her minimalist approach. One gets the feeling of being alone and frightened in the vast wilderness at night in this one, with Keller’s piano reflecting each careful step as the ensemble paints an eerie backdrop. The music segues seamlessly into the album’s longest track, appropriately named “Moonland,” which is a deeper and spookier extension of the prior piece with the ensemble sounding much like a chamber music unit. Yet, it allows for brief and oft stunning solos from the horns midway through as well as spirited exchanges with the rhythm section. Keller has her own “less is more” arresting passage before the ensemble reprises the theme.

Drummer Anderson serves as another lyrical voice as much as timekeeper as evidenced most vividly in “Uvalde.” We in the states associate that name with the tragic mass shooting but since this album deals with Roach and Australia, we can’t be sure. Nonetheless, the tone is clearly elegiac. “Eleventy Million (For Auggie Bruten) finally mixes some joy with the melancholic, closing the album on a spiritual note with trumpeter Jodrell soaring expressively.

This is richly deep, transportive music as Anning’s ensemble paints their colorful, explorative canvas.

• Jim Hynes

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