Spectreview: Alfa Mist – On My Ones [EP]

On My Ones is a concise demonstration of Alfa Mist’s formidable talent as both a pianist and a cultivator of atmosphere.

-LIGHT CORAL-

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London pianist Alfa Mist seems to fits perfectly with the times. It’s not so much his sound, although that’s certainly chic as well; his arrangements are lush and fleet-footed with a strong sense of place, evoking the rain-soaked nighttime streets of London. More importantly, he attacks jazz as a student of grime and hip-hop, two genres that are inextricably tied to jazz’s legacy, and that gives him a perspective that could only exist in the 21st century. It allows him to center in on what’s working right now, and that’s resulted in a breakthrough sophomore album (2017 surprise hit Antiphon) and an earned place among London’s jazz vanguard.

On My Ones, a new EP following 2019’s double LP Structuralism, finds the pianist in a rare unaccompanied state. The music is still very clearly Alfa Mist’s – warm, dark modal chords surgically wound around complex time signatures like an Escher staircase. Solo piano outings are usually opportunities for the listener to hear an artist work their magic outside of a full band, and here there no power lost in this solo context. The most striking moments are uncharacteristically impressionistic and slow, much slower than what he normally allows himself in a full band. These moments include the pensive “Newham Village” and the opening moments of “High Rise,” a track that wholly showcases the mixture of mantric repetition and melodic dynamism that makes his work so compelling. The rest of these tracks, including the one-two punch of “Sorry” and “L4,” are as warm and dense with arpeggios as anything off of his regular albums. They’re also just as breathtaking beautiful, like light refracting off stones in a brook, yet despite the lack of spoken context (or voice in general) there remains the unshakable weight of his raison d’être: the dissonance of the black experience, and the cross between beatific grandeur and melancholy that eternally encapsulates it.

Altogether it’s Alfa giving signature Alfa without much of a unique spin, save for those aforementioned quiescent moments. As such, it’s occasionally hard not to imagine these tracks amid the crack of a snare or the blast of wild saxophone, and overall there’s not a terribly strong argument as to why these arrangements exist as solo tracks besides the convenience of recording for one. That’s just a minor complaint against yet another stunner from a formidable talent.

Recommended for Youtube discoveries.