Irreversible Entanglements

Irreversible Entanglements emerged as a free jazz ensemble led by poet and vocalist Camae Ayewa, who performs as Moor Mother. The collective has appeared at venues throughout the U.S., U.K., Germany, the Netherlands and additional territories, issuing the self-titled Irreversible Entanglements in 2017 and Who Sent You? in 2020 on International Anthem and Don Giovanni before delivering the subsequent full-lengths Open the Gates in 2021 and Protect Your Light in 2023.

The project began in 2015 when Ayewa joined saxophonist Keir Neuringer and bassist Luke Stewart for a Brooklyn performance at an event presented by Musicians Against Police Brutality. Drummer Tcheser Holmes and trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, also on the bill that evening, soon entered the lineup for a single recording session at Seizures Palace in Brooklyn. The resulting material—two compositions by the instrumentalists plus one each from Neuringer and Stewart, all framed by Ayewa’s charged, anguished and unyielding spoken-word delivery—surfaced in 2017 as Irreversible Entanglements, with the digital version appearing in September and the vinyl and compact-disc editions following in November through the International Anthem–Don Giovanni alliance.

Favorable notices prompted extensive live work across 2018 and 2019, among them appearances at Pitchfork Fest and Jazzfest Berlin, while the 24-minute composition “Homeless/Global” surfaced that same year. The quintet returned with Who Sent You? in March 2020 via the same label partnership and released the digital-only Irreversible Live in Berlin that June. In October 2021 the group unveiled the title-track single and video for “Open the Gates,” followed by “Lágrimas del Mar” and “Keys to Creation.” The seven-track album Open the Gates arrived the next month; self-produced and captured in Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles by Michael Richelle, it was mixed by Dave Vettraino and mastered by Dave Cooley.

After extensive North American and European touring, Irreversible Entanglements entered a recording agreement with the historic jazz imprint Impulse, longtime home to John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and others. Sessions at Rudy Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, NJ yielded the eight-track label debut Protect Your Light, issued in September 2023.