Jazz
Endectomorph Music · 25 September 2026
The first track, “Go In” (4:13), starts out from John Coltrane’s “Countdown” and arrives with the sounds doubled and inverted in post-production. It is the signal for the whole record, which Kevin Sun has made so that it stands as a document and not as repertoire. He says as much himself when comparing the two volumes he has released on the same day. Of the second he says it is “more of a traditional jazz record in a sense”, with tunes that swing and simpler forms, music the band could memorise and take on tour. Of the first: “it’s not impossible to memorize, but it would just be a huge lift to do it. And it’s not really designed for that”.
Eight tracks and forty-three minutes, with Walter Stinson on bass, Max Light on guitar and Jon Starks on drums. “Scrollwork” (6:44) and “Hold Music” (5:50) are the two pieces where Sun’s rhythmic and harmonic complexity unfolds with the brakes off. Both covers come from a long way outside the canon: “Riot in Lagos”, by Ryuichi Sakamoto, closes the record, and “Souls of Fire (A Moment’s Peace)” comes from the soundtrack Yuji Takenouchi wrote for Dark Souls.
A record presented with the author’s name and a number beside it promises a statement of principles, and three of the eight tracks start from material that isn’t his: the opener built on Coltrane and the two covers. There is a second consequence of how it was made, which is that a quartet record that by its own decision isn’t designed to be played live cannot be tested against anything: the recording is at once the work and the only version there will be.
Endectomorph Music releases it under licence to La Reserve Records. Kevin Sun, II came out the same day, with seven tracks and fifty minutes, and it changes half the quartet: pianist Christian Li and drummer Kayvon Gordon come in. Endectomorph is Sun’s own label, a word he coined by joining endomorph and ectomorph, and it also releases other musicians from his Brooklyn scene.
Rating: 8.0/10
Text by Aina Torrents