Not long ago, Isaiah Barr met fellow musicians Austin Williamson and Josh Benitez in a jazz band program at York College in Jamaica, Queens. Like the rest of their bandmates, the saxophonist, drummer, and keyboardist came from different New York City high schools, and the York College Blue Notes band was offered to them as a networking platform and artistic incubator—an opportunity for serious, guided jamming. They ran with it. By 2014, with Williamson, Benitez, and others at his side, Barr founded Onyx Collective as a fluid and open-door ensemble of his own.
In the time since, the group has plastered themselves across the city as a ubiquitous and modular live jazz band. They’ve worked alongside rappers like Wiki and Princess Nokia and lent music to singers Dev Hynes and Nick Hakim. As a live act especially, Onyx Collective—sometimes as spare as that original trio, but often hovering around a half dozen—has become many things to many scenes. Now, a group of musicians that can’t sit still seem to be figuring out what it means to be a recorded band.
In 2016, teaming with the online radio platform KNOW-WAVE and the streetwear brand Supreme, Onyx Collective released a full-length debut of live recordings called Second Avenue Rundown. Their follow-up, their first music available digitally, is a series of three releases destined for the British label Big Dada, and so far they too have been conduits for the band’s traveling live act. The first two EPs, Lower East Suite Part One and Part Two, stitch together tracks recorded at a variety of locations across the city. The sleepily psychedelic “172 Forsyth St.” is named after the former KNOW-WAVE storefront radio station where Barr concretized and catalyzed the formation of Onyx Collective, and also where many of the Lower East Suite Part One songs were recorded. As a result, the first Lower East Suite EP—the better of the two—feels like a tributary time capsule to the band’s recent formation. Williamson’s drums sound tucked away in a corner, Barr’s guttural saxophone runs thicken the air and seem to bounce off the walls the louder he blows.
Many of the songs on both Lower East Suite EPs are referential pin drops somewhere or sometime specific in Manhattan. “97 Allen St.,” a shifty bebop track from Part Two, is representative of Onyx Collective’s free-flowing improvisation and named for the LES shop the Good Company, a space that sounds noisy and features moments of sidebar conversation, Barr’s frantic riffing reduced to background rambling. “Rush Hour,” recorded in the same room, is the most conceptually on-the-nose: honking sax stabs and an awkwardly gaiting rhythm effectively conjure the abrupt start-and-stop swelter of city traffic. For both better and worse, this stretch of tracks in particular—the first five from the second EP—feels especially like being in the room with the band. Even when he’s holding back, Williamson’s kit crashes over every song at this location, sometimes just so, but too often overzealously. On both “Steam Rooms” and “Skate Park,” you can almost hear him loosen his grip, and the space between strikes is both funky and refreshingly breathable, like someone has opened the door to allow the room some outside air. On the first EP, his drums have a lighter and less imposing touch.
Whether shaped by their location or permitted by it, Onyx Collective’s lasting charm is in their jam band fluidity. They often adopt an aggressive but playful bebop stance, whirling through changes with Williamson’s taps and splashes urging them forward. They can also channel their surroundings into serene cityscapes or quiet meditations, like on the final tracks of Part Two. (“Eyes Closed” sounds like closed-door respite, Barr finally tucking away from the city bustle into silence so that he can breathe deep and longingly into his sax, alone except for the faint, growing hum of a background bassline.) Elsewhere, they lean into funky jam sessions. “Mambo Pancakes” is a swampy salsa burner that juts out of the tracklist, Barr’s saxophone relegated not to solo duties as much as rhythmic core. “Fruit Stand” sounds like a dainty free jazz romp, a half volume lullaby next to some of the more boisterous jams.
Through it all, these tracklists feel less invested in fleshing out a linear live experience as they are in bottling up vignettes from the field. In that way, Onyx Collective sound like a group in motion, seeping into and out of spaces, self-leveling into place each time. For both better and worse, some of the tracks on the Lower East Suite EPs sound as much like the room as the band, the city as muse and canvas at once.
