Jacob O'Donnell

The London System, the debut record from Jacob O’Donnell, is situated perfectly at the forefront of jazz as it survives in the 21st century, which is to say ambient jazz – a bold but rational claim when one considers that Pharoah Sanders’s final album was widely categorized as such. Although O’Donnell learned his techniques in music school, toured nationally as a hired gun, and has performed with a conventional jazz trio for several years, his harmonic vocabulary and approach to saxophone-as-synthesis are anything but conventional.

As with many jazz, fusion, and ambient records of the last decade, The London System emerges from a blend of improvisation and studio editing. The pieces are carefully arranged and curated post-performance but, paradoxically, very difficult to reproduce in a live setting. In chess, the “London System” refers to a series of opening moves – a finite strategy that requires the player to adapt to changes on the board. Similarly, while O’Donnell’s loops may suggest a beatmaker’s grid, The London System is a genuine jazz record, a snapshot of his manipulation of sound in real-time. In fact, some of his effects pedals are intentionally chosen for their unpredictability, forcing O’Donnell to respond with harmonic or rhythmic decisions that might otherwise not occur.

The opening track, “A Life in a Day,” is an apt introduction to O’Donnell’s compositional methods, which he describes as centered on “process, not product.” One hears that process unfolding from the start, as a simple six-note figure meets a counter-melody and gradually builds to an ebullient, pulsing loop – or what a synthesist might call a “sequence.” O’Donnell’s saxophone is, of course, the origin of all the multifarious filtered and pitch-altered tones – some so finely grained as to approximate water trickling over stones. Compared with what’s to come, it is a spare arrangement that foregrounds individual melodies with bell-like clarity. “Thai Coconut Pecan” is a similarly uncluttered and ruminative piece that offers brilliant glimpses of O’Donnell’s improvisatory sensibilities. Later tracks, such as “Cirrus Skies,” feature more lush and expansive examples of this approach, reaching moments of experimentation that border on the psychedelic.

Even strange excursions like “Sinky Feeling” and “Buckhorn Drive” find solid harmonic footing to support impressive flights of improvisation. The latter piece develops over grainy, bit-depleted understructure and feels, at times, like a conversation held above the noise of midafternoon traffic. It’s a challenging but appropriate gesture toward, as O’Donnell explains, nostalgia for his old neighborhood and a sense that memories themselves become depleted, losing fidelity each time they’re accessed. “2021” also stems from personal history, borrowing its chordal structure from a David Bowie song that left a deep imprint on O’Donnell during the titular year.

Although “Nette Or” is the final track, it’s arguably the centerpiece of the record. The opening melody is hazy and chopped but somehow inviting, like sunlight strobing through a car window. The piece assumes a weightier, almost dirge-like quality at the halfway mark. Like its anagrammatic namesake, this track takes risks: it was performed and sequenced in real-time, with zero editing. And yet it is full of pathos, an astoundingly patient and mature statement from an artist still under the age of thirty.

As with chess, so with music: The London System is a solid opening for a singular voice in ambient jazz.