James Brandon Lewis Trio – Apple Cores

James Brandon Lewis’s Apple Cores (2025) is a bold, genre-blurring journey that fuses free jazz, hip-hop, funk, and spiritual groove into a cohesive and electrifying statement. Recorded in two fully improvised sessions with longtime collaborators Chad Taylor (drums, mbira) and Josh Werner (bass, guitar), the album is both a tribute to avant-garde legends like Don Cherry and Amiri Baraka and a forward-looking manifesto for contemporary jazz.​

The trio’s chemistry is palpable, with Lewis’s tenor saxophone weaving through angular rhythms and dub-inflected textures. Tracks like “Remember Brooklyn & Moki” and “Five Spots to Caravan” nod to Cherry’s legacy, while “Broken Shadows” pays homage to Ornette Coleman. The result is a record that feels both grounded in jazz tradition and unbound in its exploration.​

Reviews

“A vibrant celebration of tradition dressed as an urgent manifesto of the new.” — Aquarium Drunkard ​

“Apple Cores is less a jazz album and more an experimentation with rhythm and sound… It’s frantic, urgent, sometimes serene, and ultimately, toys with what’s possible with musical composition.” — New Noise Magazine ​

“The trio’s real triumph is found by looking at the bigger picture, discerning the elegant way in which they connect the ends of these disparate threads, shaping a close-knit, immensely enjoyable whole.” — The Quietus ​

“He astutely balances tradition with the new, mixing his patented approach with some new twists, from the energetic to the delicate.” — Glide Magazine ​

“Apple Cores further cements Lewis as one of the provocative and prolific musical voices of his generation.” — ANTI- Records ​