Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, Tyshawn Sorey

CD version. Uneasy is the first album by the trio of pianist Vijay Iyer, bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. It is also Iyer's first trio record since Break Stuff in 2015. Eight of its ten pieces are Iyer originals written over two decades. Several respond directly to American crises, from the poisoned water of Flint to the killing of Eric Garner, yet the music argues through form and interplay rather than slogans.

Iyer and Sorey go back to 2003, when both played on Iyer's quartet album Blood Sutra. Oh is the newer partner. The three played together throughout 2019, and this was their first studio session, recorded in December 2019 at Oktaven Audio Studio in Mount Vernon, New York. Ryan Streber engineered, and the album was produced by Iyer with Manfred Eicher. The title comes from UnEasy, a dance project of 2011. In his notes Iyer writes that the word now feels "too mild for cataclysmic times".

The opener, Children of Flint, was written in 2019 for the children of the Michigan town whose water supply was contaminated with lead. It begins softly with bass and piano before the cymbals enter. Combat Breathing first accompanied a political action at the Brooklyn Academy of Music after the 2014 protests, and has a restless, pumping drive. The only standard, Cole Porter's Night and Day, is modelled on Joe Henderson's 1964 version from Inner Urge and on McCoy Tyner's piano there. The trio also plays Drummer's Song by Geri Allen, Iyer's mentor, and Augury is a short improvised piano solo.

The album was Jazz Album of the Month in The Guardian. There John Fordham wrote that Combat Breathing "reflects the trio's collective chemistry as well as Iyer's commitment to social and political themes". In Jazzwise, Kevin Le Gendre described music in which rhythmic energy is tightly held and "the fire crackles rather than rages". Reviewers repeatedly noted that bass and drums act as equal voices, a long way from the old model of piano with rhythm accompaniment.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2692, released on 9 April 2021, with liner notes by Iyer.