Jazz
Sun Goose Records · 1 May 2026
Twelve tracks and not one of them under four and a half minutes: Jason Kruk’s second album has the ambition of a suite, and the running order confirms it. Tracks three to six are “The Lion”, “The Ox”, “The Eagle” and “The Man”, the four living creatures of Ezekiel’s vision. Then comes “Dad” (5:15), the only personal title here, and the next four are “Water”, “Wind”, “Earth” and “Fire”. “Creation” (6:54) closes. The album title points at the veil of the Holy of Holies, so the journey runs from the creatures through the elements and lands on creation.
The casting is the real argument: every track credits a guest. Adam Rogers takes five, Snarky Puppy bassist Michael League five more, and Wayne Krantz the fifth and the sixth. “The Eagle” (9:17) is the longest thing here and it’s Krantz’s, working the distortion and the angular phrasing he’s always worked, with a shift in pulse at the bridge. Bob Lanzetti, also of Snarky Puppy, and bassist Fima Ephron play here too; the piano and Rhodes are Art Hirahara’s, the tenor Brian Donohoe’s.
Kruk is the drummer and the composer, and he’s written this so the spotlight travels away from him. “Ascension” (4:43) opens with Donohoe and Hirahara out front over a pulse that doesn’t hide itself; on “Wind” (5:10) Hirahara starts alone on Rhodes before the theme arrives, and the metre changes land without warning; and “Creation” keeps the closing six and a half minutes to shut the cycle. What you hear in between is New York fusion of the direct lineage, polyrhythms held without emphasis.
Seventy-three minutes, though, is too much for the idea. The symmetry of the titles (four creatures, four elements) becomes a symmetry of form, and from the third track to the eleventh the mould repeats almost unchanged: statement, long guest solo, return. By “The Ox” (6:13) and “The Man” (6:00) the record is working off its own template, and the concept doesn’t earn the twelve minutes they take. There was a better album here at fifty.
Twelve tracks, seventy-three minutes, Sun Goose Records, 1 May. It’s Kruk’s second album under his own name and his first in seventeen years: Leaving Saturn dates from 2009.
Rating: 6.8/10
Text by Aina Torrents