The term ‘Apple Cores’ has a strong resonance in black cultural history. It was the name of a mid 1960s Amiri Baraka DownBeat column that chronicled new music that was both avant-garde and pop. Saxophonist James Brand Lewis’ reference to it makes a lot of sense insofar as he has rooted his illustrious career to date in a broadly similar electicism and this trio with drummer Chad Taylor and bass guitarist Josh Werner is also stylistically open.

Lewis’ uproarious, piercing timbre and often relentlessly percussive phrasing over raw funk-rock riffs, sometimes enhanced by misty, ghostly effects, create a strange industrial improv, but there are rhythmically complex, African inflections aplenty, in tribute to Don Cherry, among others. Werner also switches to guitar on occasion to create trippy, reverb-heavy chords that push the music into a mysterioso sensuality, which is largely consistent with the leader’s work in his previous electric trio. This format is becoming as distinct a strand of his oeuvre as the acoustic quartet, underlining James Brandon Lewis' stature as a significant contemporary composer and improviser who has a widescreen artistic vision.