For all the haze of electronics and rhythmic clamour surrounding No Nation but Imagination, what lingers most are the Abdullah Ibrahim-meets-Billy Taylor vamps of ‘Coda Over the Fence’.
Emerging late in the album through layers of electronics and dense percussion, they provide the emotional centre of a vivid, searching release from the English pianist Alexander Hawkins, known for his work with Anthony Braxton, Mulatu Astatke and his own longstanding trio with Neil Charles and Steve Davis.
The album opens with ‘Solo Way Far Gone’, its brittle electronic keyboards and stabbing motifs offering little indication of what follows. There is an austere, almost monophonic quality to the piece, Hawkins probing at ideas rather than settling into them.
Things become far more compelling on ‘Resolution Each and Every’, where the album’s Afrojazz leanings come properly into focus. The flute and Hamid Drake’s thundering drums form the pillars around which the tune gathers force, and it is in these rhythmically driven sections that the record feels most alive.
Joined by Rhodri Davies on harp, Drake on drums, Nicole Mitchell on flute and Matthew Wright on turntables and live sampling, Hawkins is once again released by the esoteric Swiss avant label Intakt, which has long championed his work. Wright’s contribution is especially important, his electronics giving the record its distinctive sheen, laundering acoustic sounds through a flickering, unstable surface.
At its best, the writing – all Hawkins’ and, while free-jazz, not simply improvised rigidly spontaneously on the spot – carries genuine joy. The ensemble shifts fluidly between sketch-like textures, rhythmic propulsion and floating, spacious episodes. The music breathes. Yet the more brittle, tension-heavy sections can feel suspended rather than cumulative, interrupting the momentum generated elsewhere by the album’s vamps and uptempo movements. At times I found myself skipping ahead in search of those more rhythmic sections, growing impatient with what Hawkins’ fellow avant pianist Steve Beresford once described as the “roughage” of improvisation: passages where texture and gesture substitute for forward motion.
Still, beyond a few longueurs, the record remains curious, alert and humane. Even when the ensemble’s natural pulse seems to grind bafflingly to a halt — as on ‘Mirror No Border’ – the underlying spirit of inquiry revives often enough to sustain interest.
The album’s spiritual jazz dimension is most apparent on the spare ‘Circles in the Celestial Garden’, though Mitchell’s playing on ‘Joy Beyond Blazing’ ultimately provides the record’s strongest moments. At its best, No Nation but Imagination finds a rare balance between abstraction and physicality, and proves exploratory without ever entirely losing its more visceral pulse.
