Jairus Sharif

Water & Tools is a dense, contradictory statement with a blustery surface that shelters a soulful heart. It's generous music, exuding profound vulnerability, all the while brimming with electric wide-eyed wonder. Almost every one of the nine pieces seems to carry some semblance of a groove, while remaining completely untethered from pulse.

For Sharif, this collection is an expression of newfound lucidity, however for the listener his sonic concoctions act as powerful psychotropics. At points, there's a timelessness that's conveyed through the music's processional, ritualistic tenor, and yet there's an endless amount of wild, futuristic detail waiting to unspool at any given moment.

Similarly, while this recording emerges from Sharif's private pilgrimage and personal emancipation, he also leaves room for collaboration. Woven throughout Sharif's one-man-ensemble textures, one finds Maxmilian Turnbull (of Badge Epoque, U.S. Girls, and Cosmic Range infamy) providing sundry keyboards and treatments, as well as his mixing skills.