Can the space-time continuum be changed? This track might just be the proof. Using Ronnie Foster’s simple vamp from his 1972 album Two Headed Freap, Iyer, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Marcus Gilmore manage to bend time. Yes, bend time. If you listen to the snare, you will hear that actual time remains constant throughout the whole of the five-minute track, marching inexorably forward. However, if you listen to the piano, bass, and rest of the drum set, you will experience time being compressed, stretched, bent, and squeezed like taffy. Like taffy, man. There is a book that posits that doctors who communicate well can take a 15 minute visit and make it feel like they spent an hour with you. Those doctors must have been listening to Vijay Iyer. 

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Listen to the full album Historicity:

The experience of a day in clinic for a physician is an extraordinary thing. Patients come in from all walks of life, with all sorts of issues, some searing hot, others calm and still. Questions, answers, negotiations, stories, advice. Fear, elation, sadness, pain, hope, faith, love. It all happens in a 4-hour span. And the way it moves is like a rollercoaster, changing radically every 20 minutes or so, as the doc enters the next room, sees the next patient, and experiences the next story. Nuphar Fey’s “In the Fall” moves like a day in clinic, flowing from one mood to the next, through a whole kaleidoscope of life, all in seven minutes. Extraordinary. 

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Listen to the full album Serenity Island: