Iyer’s music has a passionate severity that owes much to the darker reaches of the jazz keyboard literature – Bud Powell and Andrew Hill, especially – though the more genial figure of Thelonious Monk has also left a mark on it. Another important strand in his work is the influence of Indian music. There are some specific borrowings here from Vedic chant and “South Indian techniques of rhythmic progression” (though Iyer notes that “I found myself learning to negotiate them from Bud Powell”); more generally its influence is evident in the music’s rhythmic sophistication and in the dancing grace of Iyer’s righthand lines. His righthand man here is Rudresh Mahanthappa, whose scorching alto saxophone touches on many sources from Greg Osby and Steve Coleman to that great synthesizer of jazz and Indian music John Coltrane, but who most often reminds me of the eldritch sound and flamelike intensity of Sam Rivers. Panoptic Modes is brimful of music, and though the opening “Invocation” (a tribute to Rishi Maharaj, victim of a racially-motivated 1998 attack in New York) is quite unsurpassably fiery, the rest of the album keeps things at a similar pitch and pace – courting the danger of relentlessness, but I think succeeding in keeping the interest level high. When Iyer finally lets the pace drop on the last track, the free-tempo ballad “Mountains,” it performs a very satisfying resolution of the album’s energies: written in response to Iyer’s seeing a mountain range from an airplane, it indeed conveys a sense of wonder, grandeur and nobility. A strong, fresh album that marks both Iyer and Mathanthappa as names to watch.

Nate Dorward

Coda, May/June 2002