Chris Potter Circuits Trio
Sunrise Reprise
Edition, 2021

Sunrise Reprise is the second album by the Chris Potter’s Circuits Trio.

In 2019, Edition Records released Circuits, the first album of the ensemble formed by Chris Potter on saxophones, fautes, clarinets, guitars, keyboards and percussion; James Francies on keyboards, Linley Marthe on electric bass and Eric Harland on drums.  

On May 14th Edition released Sunrise Reprise, the sequel to Circuits. The music continues with the experimentation between jazz, electronics, fusion, bebop, and contemporary R&B that characterizes the band, now featuring a line up without  bass player..

The central elements of the record are the sounds. In the foreground, the keyboards are characterized by the songs with different colors, as you can hear in the liquid sounds of “Sunrise and Joshua Trees” or the psychedelic sounds (almost space rock) of the second part of “Southbound”. The compositions, all written by Potter, range between the modal vamps you will hear in “Sunrise and Joshua Tree”, bop themes that recall the Zawinul Syndicate as in the wonderful “Serpentine”, the fascinating ballad of “The Peanut” which is almost completely acoustic and without drums, and the final “Nowhere Now Here / Sunrise Reprise”, an aggressive and virtuoso track featuring numerous different sections.

Sunrise Reprise is a particularly successful record, certainly among the best that are trying to create new and original sound worlds by mixing jazz and electronics. Potter once again confirms himself no only as a top level composer and musician but also a visionary creator of innovative and highly personal musical landscapes.
(EM)