Of Time feels like a map drawn in rhythm rather than ink. Built around the deep baritone saxophone of Eden Bareket, the elastic bass of Ran Livneh and the unhurried, nerve‑sensitive drumming of Eran Fink, Underground Spiritual Game sketch an “imaginary journey through the grime of the city to the sweat of the rural beat.” The music often begins in a haze of minimalist texture - low, repeating figures, brushed cymbals, bass lines that seem to test the ground before committing. From there, the trio pull the listener along a path where grooves thicken, themes rise like landmarks and improvisations flare up before dissolving back into a steady, breathing pulse.
At the heart of the record is a particular kind of interplay: each musician committed to restraint, yet all three ready to push when the current demands it. Bareket’s baritone carries melody and drone at once, speaking in short, incantatory phrases or unfurling long arcs that ride the rhythm section like shifting weather. Livneh’s bass shapes the landscape underneath - a few notes, repeated and subtly varied, serving as both anchor and invitation, giving Fink room to shade the beat rather than simply mark it. Fink’s kit work is all about contour: dry snare snaps, quietly insistent hi‑hat patterns, tom figures that move like footsteps on packed earth. Together they create meditative grooves that feel as if they could run for hours without exhausting their logic.
Stylistically, Of Time triangulates between Ethiopian jazz’s modal melancholy, Afrobeat’s cyclical urgency and the open horizons of cosmic free jazz. Horn lines hint at Addis motifs without direct quotation, riding scales that hover just above or below familiar Western expectations. Bass and drums lock into patterns that nod to Afrobeat’s engine‑room power, but with a looseness that allows for air, hesitation and sudden turnarounds. When the trio lean into freer playing, it is never a rejection of rhythm so much as a temporary suspension, a chance for breath and texture before the next pattern coheres. The music steadily dissolves the border between “deep listening” and “danceable energy”: you can sit still and follow every micro‑shift, or let your body track the changes first and analyse later.
Visually framed by Stephen Warwick’s artwork and Sophie Cooke’s design, Of Time presents itself as a unified environment rather than a mere collection of tunes. Motifs return in altered form, tempos contract and expand, yet the underlying sense is of a single stretch of time being carved into movements. The trio’s thematic explorations suggest stories without spelling them out - a horn figure that feels like a call to gather, a breakdown that resembles the moment a crowd collectively exhales, a closing passage that sounds like arrival without finality. In their hands, rhythm becomes both vehicle and subject, the means by which diverse traditions and geographies - city and countryside, America and Africa, composition and improvisation - are drawn into a shared, quietly glowing field.
