Positioning, flow, calibration, order – each is keenly considered here, and each helps make this the trio’s most compelling date so far. Balance is paramount. Iyer’s interests trigger a wealth of ideas, and from the trio’s rhythmic slant (one track conjures Robert Hood’s crackling techno beats) to the pianist’s keyboard touch (Andrew Hill’s sense of stealth gets a nod at various points), the larger picture is always kept in view.
Jim Macnie, DownBeat (five stars)
Jenseits aller Klischees: Jazzpianist Vijay Iyer hat mit seinem Trio des meisterhafte Album ‚Break Stuff‘ eingespielt, das mühelos einen Bogen zwischen Club und Konzertsaal schlägt.
Gregor Dotzauer, Der Tagesspiegel Berlin
The title of ‘Break Stuff’ refers to what pianist/composer Iyer describes, more obliquely than at first glance, is contained in the “break” as “the basis for breakdowns, break-beats, and break dancing... the moment when everything comes to life.” There may not be a lot of dance potential on this highly complex album where there’s no obvious beat – it’s all about flow – but certainly there is a sense of the unexpected in the jagged pauses, weighted phrases, tiny deafening silences, and runaway momentum of the material on the album some of which was premiered at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and some from Open City, a collaboration with writer Teju Cole. […] A state-of-the-art jazz piano trio album. No one sounds like them.
Stephen Graham, Marlbank
Balladesk, technoid, frei von Klischees: Meisterliches vom Vijay Iyer Trio […] Die gängigen Klischees fehlen. Die unter den Instrumenten übliche Rollenverteilung von Melodie, Harmonie und Rhythmus ist außer Kraft gesetzt. Streckenweise ertappt man sich dabei, einen Takt mit zu wippen, den niemand spielt: Er entsteht zwischen den Linien der drei gleichberechtigten Musiker […] Eine Kunst der Verfugung, so verblüffend wie berauschend.
Ulrich Stock, Die Zeit
This is a very distinctive piano trio working with great intellectual incisiveness, but also making music of excitement and emotional depth.
Peter Bacon, Birmingham Post
Alle drei wissen, dass Jazz heute nicht mehr nur aus sich selbst leben kann, und holen sich Inspiration im HipHop (‚Break Stuff‘) oder beim Minimal-Techno-Pionier Robert Hood (‚Hood‘), ohne sich diesen Stilen aber an den Hals zu werfen. Es ist immer noch akustischer Klavier-Trio-Jazz. Nur eben von heute.
Tobias Rapp, Der Spiegel
Pianist Vijay Iyer’s 11-year-old trio is a highly manoeuvrable vehicle for his African, Indian and maths-inspired rhythmic ideas, now at a dizzying pinnacle of contemporary jazz multitasking. […]This is cutting-edge music, but always accessible.
John Fordham, The Guardian
While there's no doubt that much of this group's development has been the consequence of time spent together honing its unique complexion, beyond ‘Break Stuff's’ more pristine sonics there's little doubt, when compared to its ACT recordings, that this recording has benefited significantly from the "fourth" member of Iyer's trio: label head and producer Manfred Eicher. If the three recordings Iyer has prolifically released in just eleven months are any indication, the pianist's move to ECM—already yielding significant results—has only begun to deliver on even greater promises to come.
John Kelman, All About Jazz
The fifth and best record of Mr. Iyer’s trio […] The band’s refractive language makes sense of whatever material it plays. You don’t hear the record and seize on its sense of rupture or argument. Instead, it sounds whole.
Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
Iyer, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Marcus Gilmore have fully incorporated electronica and hip-hop into a jazz vocabulary. Despite the album’s layered meters, you couldn’t ask for a more swinging ‘Work’, or a more moving solo-piano treatment of ‘Blood Count’.
Jon Garelick, Boston Globe
With ‘Break Stuff’, his third trio album and his first on the ECM label, Vijay Iyer comes into his own as a master pianist, composer, and conceptualizer—one of the truly great jazz musicians of our time.
Red Kaplan, Stereophile
Within this flowing and well-programmed collection of 12 tunes are 1) a tribute to Detroit techno producer Robert Hood, 2) a similar nod to major influence Thelonious Monk and 3) a solo take of Billy Strayhorn’s final written composition ‘Blood Count.’ Within the tradition, but equally outside it, Iyer’s music knows no bounds—and it sounds thoroughly delightful here.
Dave DiMartino, Rollingstone.com
Complex, multilayered rhythmic ideas are passed between Iyer and his colleagues (bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore), building shiver-inducing tension. But however dense the music gets, there is always groove and always an underlying logic. Alongside Iyer’s testing original compositions, standards from Monk, Strayhorn and Coltrane reveal the trio’s working methods and make evident their firm grasp of the American tradition, a tradition of which they are to the forefront in extending.
Cormac Larkin, Irish Times
Iyer’s approach is at once angular and melodic, at turns delicate and muscular. At this point, Crump and Gilmore know him so well, and vice versa, that every moment of interaction is completely empathetic, almost telepathic. […] Each tune brims with tension and dynamics […] In the final analysis, it is Iyer’s vision and individuality, but also his bond with his trio, that makes ‘Break Stuff’ such a smashing success.
Steve Greenlee, Jazz Times
This trio remains one of the ongoing jazz ensembles that seems to discover new things at every turn, that seems simultaneously on the cutting edge and embedded deep in the music’s history. Vijay Iyer, Stephan Crump, and Marcus Gilmore continue to make the argument that we are in a golden age for daring jazz that is also accessible to any open ear, young, old, or otherwise.
Will Layman, Pop Matters
Gemeinsam mit seinem langjährigen Trio mit Bassist Stephan Crump und Schlagzeuger Marcus Gilmore findet Iyer eine faszinierende Balance zwischen Intellekt und Emotion, zwischen Konzeption und Improvisation, zwischen technischer Brillanz und musikalischem Einfallsreichtum, di e in ihrer nonchalanten Selbstverständlichkeit deutlichhinausgeht über die auch schon bemerkenswerten vorherigen CDs des Trios […] Ein Highlight gleich zum Jahresbeginn 2015.
Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, Jazzpodium
Pianist Vijay Iyer's latest album is broadly a resetting of compositions for some larger ensembles for his long standing trio. The process of deconstructing them - stripping them down and reforming them for a classic jazz trio of piano, bass and drums - Iyer sees as ‘breaks’ […] This is a compelling record, full of imaginative ideas and fascinating rhythms, trying new things whilst firmly rooted in a classic jazz context.
Patrick Hadfield, London Jazz News
Iyer ist zwar auch ein sehr dynamischer Klangarchitekt, er baut bei all seiner Vorliebe für eine Ästhetik der Kontraste auch größere Spannungsbögen. Aber selbst auf der pathetischsten Klimax gibt es bei ihm ein Moment der Distanz und Kontrolle, ist er Darsteller und nicht hingerissener Ekstatiker. Eine fabel- und meisterhafte CD. Reich, überraschend. Und auch scheinbar widersprüchlich: Musik mit großem Schattenwurf.
Peter Rüedi, Die Weltwoche
If earlier in Iyer’s career he thrived in producing massive textures and colossal chords, now his pianism sounds lighter in tone and more ethereal in texture, with comparable response from his longtime trio, with bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore. Most of the works are originals developed by the band, but the pianist also presents an exquisitely delicate, harmonically advanced solo account of Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Bloodcount’. In the end, Iyer stands as one of the most adventurous and technically accomplished pianists in jazz, bridging the past, present and future of the music with other genres that happen to pique his curiosity. And ours.
Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
The album’s unquestionable highlight is ‘Hood.’ Composed for techno producer Robert Hood, it’s an original piece in which Iyer and Gilmore play rigorously metric patterns that seem repetitive but exist in a constant state of metamorphosis. The pair seems to swap rhythmic and melodic roles by the end, as Crump plays a stubby ostinato that functions as the work’s crucial connective tissue. The track is one of the most exhilarating pieces of music I’ve heard all year. Elsewhere on ‘Break Stuff’ the band refashions Coltrane’s hard-bop masterpiece ‘Countdown’ and Iyer offers a brooding solo interpretation of Billy Strayhorn’s deathbed swan song ‘Blood Count.’ On the surface Iyer’s trio is a model of composure and grace, but the ideas darting beneath the surface are as electric and bold as anything in jazz today.
Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
It’s fascinating listening to any one of the three musicians, but their totality is close to transcendent. The title track is a good place to pay attention to the album’s seemingly quizzical theme. As Iyer says in the liner notes, ‘A break in music is still music: a span of time in which to act.’ While not always accessible — the relationships here to blues and swing can be quite abstract — ‘Break Stuff’ is physical, intuitive, intellectual, and emotional. That is, it’s exciting.
Paul Weideman, Santa Fé New Mexican
