Philadelphia/Chicago duo The Early – Jake Nussbaum (drums, percussion, electronics) and Alex Lewis (guitar, synths) – have been playing together for well over a decade. In that time, they have mastered a specific brand of improvised music that draws not only on jazz but on hard-edged experimental rock. As such, they’re a perfect fit for the Chicago scene, whose leading lights include Tortoise, Jeff Parker and Jim O’Rourke. Their latest two releases are an EP, Cusp, and an album, I Want to be Ready, both recorded at Philly studio Kawari Sound, but bearing many of the hallmarks of their Chicago peers.
The Cusp EP was released in December. It features three linked compositions, the first of which, Another Green Morning, is full of bright chimes and grumbling, gurgling guitar and synth. It speaks of decay and new life. The title hints at Brian Eno, and Another Green World, Eno’s 1975 album, is not a bad place to start when discussing the Early’s musical philosophy. But the sound reaches in different directions: too physical to be purely ambient, too percussive, too propulsive and improvisational.
The divisions between the three pieces are largely academic: Cusp is best listened to as a single take, a long improvisation that clatters around your mind, disturbing dust and blowing away cobwebs. Halfway through the second piece, Asymptote, the pair lock into a kind of groove, stop-start drums carrying the wild, piercing guitar. On the final third, Chopagetti, the pair are joined by LA-based multi-instrumentalist Patrick Shiroishi. Here, the sound gets richer and thicker: a cosmic, rhythmic improvised jazz bolted to a post-rock chassis. Shiroishi’s intuitive sax lines bounce between melody and discord as the backing grows increasingly dense; imagine sentient organic lifeforms – climbing plants, perhaps – taking over a man-made structure and rendering it both obscure and meaningful.
Although the ideas that root these improvisations are minimalist in conception, their fruits are more complex. allowing multiple musical forms (often a combination of free jazz and post-rock) to co-exist. These complexities – and the parallel existence of minimalism and saturation – are further explored in the full-length, five-track album I Want To Be Ready. The Laughing Earth grows from ambient beginnings – drones and low grumbles – into a stumbling march that seems to gather sonic elements to it almost magnetically. There is the feel of a celebratory parade or procession, one that draws more and more revellers as it progresses, until it becomes a wild, percussive clatter. All the while, drawn-out peals of guitar line its periphery. Sand Clock features some more recognisable post-rock drumming: rhythmic handholds in a squalling guitar edifice. Hill Forms comes to life slowly, skittering at first like a newborn foal, Nussbaum hitting as many different hard objects as he possibly can in the shortest time possible. Before you know it, the pair are charging forward, bits of melody like shards of stained glass in their wake.
The album is centred on the grand-scale Flossless. Again, post-rock dynamics form the basis from which the duo can freely improvise. Minimal pin-pricks of guitar usher in breathless drumming and a cleansing wash of synth. The growth is incremental: you never know quite how you get to where you are, but you know that it has been achieved naturally and with a great deal of finesse. Rather than engaging in acts of musical worldbuilding (something fraught with hubris), Lewis and Nussbaum pass through landscapes, lighting them up and leaving them changed for the better. The album’s title track, its final piece, is full of bright glimmers and soft splashes. A wandering, deceptively ephemeral thing. The Early are aware that their music, like all acts of human creativity, is a series of ripples or a transient scattering of light, destined to disappear. If it can be beautiful in its moment of creation and in its moment of consumption, they have succeeded. And it’s safe to say that I Want To Be Ready is a resounding success.
I Want To Be Early (February 27th, 2026) Island House Recordings (Bandcamp)
Cusp (December 3rd, 2025) Island House Recordings (Bandcamp)
Live Dates
Fri Feb 27 – Catskill, NY – The Avalon Lounge – Tickets
Sun, Mar 1 – Philadelphia, PA – Solar Myth – Tickets