by Marcus J. Moore

In 1994, the drummer Franklin Kiermyer released the album Solomon’s Daughter, a volcanic set of spiritual jazz featuring the pianist John Esposito, the acoustic bassist Drew Gress, and the tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. At face value, that sentence isn’t so rebellious. But when you consider when the album was released — almost 30 years after Pharoah, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler helped pioneer this explosive style of experimental music — the LP properly recalled a time when artists sought peace through this art. With Pharoah, ‘Trane and Albert, in particular, they played the sax so hard that they wanted the notes to reach God’s ears.

Perhaps on purpose, Solomon’s Daughter seemed indebted to that era of vast experimentation. Putting that out in the ‘90s took courage; this type of music wasn’t so popular with rap and R&B dominating the musical landscape. Or maybe Kiermyer never really cared about such arbitrary notions anyway. Kiermyer never lost the fire: As the leader of Scatter the Atoms That Remain, a project dedicated to what Kiermyer calls the Power of Transformative Spiritual Music, his work emits even more heat. Drums tumble and cascade, saxophones blare with raucous intensity, piano chords hit like needles on skin. It’s meant to make listeners feel something metamorphic, a feeling you can’t quite fathom but can’t turn away from. In a world split along political and ideological lines, the music is urging you to fight, to purge whatever anxieties trouble you, to wake up and give a damn, to love.

Inspired by albums like ‘Trane’s Sun Ship and First Meditations, this LP is urgent and timely, the soundtrack of resistance in a time of unrest. Produced by Kiermyer and Jason Olaine and featuring a wide-ranging cast of fellow iconoclasts — Isaiah Collier, Keyon Harrold, Jasbir Jassi, Aaron Parks, Linda Sikhakhane, Carlos Niño and others — Scatter the Atoms That Remain captivates from the onset. On “One is Love,” Kiermyer and Collier engage in a compelling tit-for-tat, matching each other’s smoke with frenetic percussion and scorching wails that heighten the song’s tension. Other songs like “Clairvoyance” and “The Truth Is Just an Echo” are meditative, the latter a lyrics-driven reflection about the meaning of tenderness. When the vocalist Jeff Bhasker sings, “love doesn’t ask for proof, doesn’t demand an explanation, just blooms where it’s planted,” he’s speaking to the subtleties that sustain the emotion long term: the come as you are, the understanding, the I see you, we’ll get through this together. The song “False Prophets” is especially well-timed: Beneath Kiermyer’s sauntering drums and Davis Whitfield’s mournful piano, we hear faint audio of political leaders claiming to restore the country to previous glory. But the song and the album’s overall vigor remind us that a place founded on brutality and racism was never truly glorious. And it’s even less so these days, with all the genocide, hate, violence and tyranny, and politicians looking away from it all. Ultimately, Scatter the Atoms That Remain nudges us to protect our dearest loved ones, to battle fiercely, to understand that spirit music can be a form of resistance. Heed the call and let the muse guide you.