Chad Taylor

Chicago Underground Duo’s Hyperglyph is a stunning return, a masterful fusion of free jazz and otherworldly exploration. Rob Mazurek’s trumpet and synthesizers blend with Chad Taylor’s percussion, creating a relentless, vibrant album that feels both familiar and entirely new. It’s an exhilarating, multi-layered work of pure invention.

The Chad Taylor Quintet’s “Smoke Shifter,” out November 14, 2025, is a testament to jazz as a living language. As the album notes highlight, the music is a “continually developing social reflection on language.” Featuring a quintet with deep Philadelphia roots, the album showcases a collaborative spirit, with compositions from all members, resulting in a cohesive and dynamic sound that defies easy classification.

After an 11-year hiatus, the pioneering Chicago Underground Duo—Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor—return with their new album, Hyperglyph, out August 15th via International Anthem. Lead single “Click Song” offers a potent taste of their evolved sound, blending blown-out horn chants, muscular polyrhythms, and deep synthesised bass.

Within the meticulous nature of the sound of ‘Onilu’ is a paradoxically careful abandon, and the love of the playing and bouncing off of one another shines through brightly. I’ve not come across anything quite like it.

Mind Maintenance is less about its individual tracks as it is about being a continual, looping listening experience. There is something wholly magnetising about this rare music and its insistently repetitive nature that is hard to switch from. Enchanting, exciting, beautifully performed music.