Hot on the heels of their widely celebrated release of Lisa Ullén’s “Heirloom”, the Stockholm based imprint, Fönstret, returns with “Giant Beauty”, a towering X5 CD box set, capturing the ensemble, أحمد [Ahmed] - Pat Thomas (piano), Joel Grip (double bass), Antonin Gerbal (drums) and Seymour Wright (alto saxophone) - live in Stockholm over the course of five consecutive nights during the summer of 2022. Channeling, rearranging, and reimagining the music of the visionary American jazz composer, double bassist, and oud player, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, it contains some of the wildest, most wonderous, and joyous expressions of free improvisation - from the deeply intimate and sensitive to hard blown fire - that we're likely to encounter in some time.

For the last few years, the Fönstret imprint - the publishing arm of John Chantler’s, Stockholm based Edition festival - has quietly issued a series of books, films, and as of last year - with the release of the ensemble Kommun’s “Ephemeralds” - recorded music.

First appearing on the scene in 2016, each member of the quartet that makes up أحمد [Ahmed] stands among the most important players within their respective geographies of jazz and freely improvised music, Pat Thomas and Seymour Wright belonging to London’s vibrant contemporary scene, Antonin Gerbal to Paris’, and the Swedish bassist, Joel Grip, to Berlin’s. Loosely connected to Thomas’ longstanding deconstructive practice of drawing upon the work of jazz giants, أحمد [Ahmed] rearranges and reimagines the music of the visionary American jazz composer, double bassist, and oud player, Ahmed Abdul-Malik (1927-1993) - noted as among the first artists to directly draw upon the musical modes of the Middle East and North Africa - in real time. Pointedly, أحمد [Ahmed]’s music does not approach Abdul-Malik’s music as covers or homages, but rather points of departure. As Seymour Wright explains in the collection’s accompanying booklet: “it might be with some rhythmic, or melodic, or some sense of what sort of space that piece inhabits, that’s what informs how you do it. But obviously, they’re not covers as such.. they are spontaneous arrangements.. it may also just be one aspect or part.. maybe that I choose one aspect and Pat chooses a different aspect”.

It’s rare to encounter any band over the course of multiple evenings, let alone in an expansive recorded form that allows for the observance of subtle shifts and nuances between the exchange of the members. Particularly for a band like أحمد [Ahmed], the importance of such happening becomes remarkably clear when encountering “Giant Beauty”. Capturing the ensemble over the course of five evenings at Fylkingen in Stockholm, during the 2022 incarnation of Edition Festival, where they played counterpoint to a nightly series of Éliane Radigue “Occam” performances, among others, as Silvia Tarozzi states in the booklet - “Every night the quartet brings a new song, takes it apart, puts it back together again, follows the music on unknown paths, sometimes back, sometimes not, but always remains in motion, flowing like a river in flood” - in this case “Nights on Saturn”, “Oud Blues”, “African Bossa Nova”, “Rooh (The Soul)”, and “El Haris (Anxious)”.

The first night begins with a highly refined version of “Nights on Saturn” - the band having played it multiple times over the years, with Grip and Gerbal’s percussive drive leading the way amongst the frenetic, tonal interplay unfolding between Thomas and Wright. Furious, dancing, and at times punching, it’s an astounding beginning to the collection, proving that the unrelenting fire of free improvisation is alive and well in the present day.

The second CD comprises “Oud Blues”, played the following night. Beginning in a place that couldn’t be more different than where they left off the evening before, the piece moves quickly into a swinging, straight-ahead blues, increasingly filled with raucous, ragged energy as it progresses, as the band break it apart, string it back together, and break it again, picking up the pace to a howl.

The following disc departs into “African Bossa Nova”, a piece never before recorded and rarely heard, taking off into a vibrant, latin swing, that’s reconfigured continuously into a broken stride of foot tapping joyousness, before elevating into a furious machine gun fire of rhythm and tonality. Like the previous disc, the fourth CD features an unrecorded and rarely played piece by the band “Rooh (The Soul)”. Beginning as a grinding dirge of profound density within which tension continuously swells and builds - Grip’s bass channelling cellist Abdul Wadud who died the same week - it isn’t until around the 13 minute mark that the band fully untruths into a blasting, series of rhythmic passages that enter deep into the consciousness with a howl.

Having already traveled nearly four hours with أحمد [Ahmed] - tuning the ear to the quartet’s remarkable and singular approach to music - the final disc, which features the piece “El Haris (Anxious)”, introduces a playful, almost carnivalesque sensibility before moving increasingly into a wild, seething sea of blistering interplay, further unlocking the band’s principal approach - “No discussion. No plan. No solos.” - via a process of open, ongoing learning via the excavation of the past as a re-imagination of a future music.

An absolutely blistering and engrossing listen from the first sounding to the last, أحمد [Ahmed]’s “Giant Beauty” rises as one of the great artefacts of avant-garde music of today.