William Hooker - Cycle of Restoration (2019)

Revolutionary drummer William Hooker leads a new trio with Mark Kirschenmann, trumpet, and Joel Peterson, bass. This set recorded live in one take at Trinosphes in Detroit MI starts at the bottom with no apparent leverage, in an hour of constant upheaval overturning the possibilities of music. Deceptively serene out of the zero code, you soon realize that your mind has been retuned to a new understanding of reality: reach into the part that psilocybin touches, without acid, and see the same tables, the same trees, the same windows and walls but now knowing that while these endure the human structures that imprison the self will fall away.

Leading from the kit with long streams of felted cymbals, Hooker reveals a new chapter of his eternal unfolding, one that will surprise even those who have followed him these 40-some years. Cycle of Restoration is a revelation of renewal with SE MI pillars Kirschenmann and Peterson filling peals, clangs and scrapes.

We ascend. Climb. We continue walking this way up, realizing this progress. Where do we go when we reach the top? How do we entertain the idea of a reality that moves in a circle? Not gone, just unfolded. Cycle of Restoration. Revolutionary, for the mind, means we revolve. These sounds bring us full circle.