Chicago jazz on disc

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Like its predecessor, Boca Negra finds Mazurek and Taylor wearing their multi-instrumentalist hats and tweaking their interplay with electronic enhancements, plotting out music of small gestures and bold, emphatic outbursts. Mazurek takes a break from busily fluttering cornet to lay the surprise of an ethereal flute passage on the opening “Green Ants.” Taylor digs in with steady, entrancing tom-tom beats, but on the ambient piece “Left Hand of Darkness” he introduces processed mbira, one of the album’s recurring textures. The instrument’s metallic low tones on “Quantum Eye” recall the diddley bow and miscellaneous instruments of Cooper-Moore, Taylor’s bandmate in Digital Primitives. While some moments verge on noodling, there’s a judicious balance of free acoustic blowing (parts of Ornette Coleman’s “Broken Shadows”), calming aural expanses (the lyrical “Hermeto”), dub and electronica references (“Spy on the Floor,” “Vergence”) and surging asymmetric rhythm (“Confliction” sounds like something Vijay Iyer might have dreamed up). Sound design is as central here as the playing itself, so one must credit producer Matthew Lux, who happens to play electric bass on Mazurek’s Sound Is.

A bit too long at 71-plus minutes, Sound Is has a certain kinship with Boca Negra in terms of sonic outline. Drummer John Herndon of Tortoise is loose yet focused from the outset, sounding not worlds away from Chad Taylor; he’s also credited on an obscure electronic instrument called the tenori-on. Vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz gives the music a legato fullness, while Lux, a partner in Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, shares low-end duties with acoustic bassist Josh Abrams (and improvises in a flowing, Phil Lesh-like mold on “The Lightning Field”). Subtleties abound: vamping piano chords and jangling percussion on “The Star Splitter”; sonorous bowed-vibes drones on “Microraptagonafly”; folkish melodic simplicity on “Cinnamon Tree”; echoes of Joe Zawinul’s “Directions” on “The Dream Rocker”; a stark rhythmic transition during “The Hill,” one of the most jazz-oriented features for Mazurek’s horn. The ideas are ear-catching, with mostly direct segues between tracks, but a bit of ruthless editing would have helped.

Taylor’s Circle Down is a simpler proposition — piano trio all the way, with Sanchez and Lightcap — and it takes a few listens for the elusive beauty and structural integrity of the 10 tracks to sink in. Taylor and Sanchez (not to mention Matthew Lux) are both involved in the pop act Iron & Wine, and that shared experience seems to filter through on pared-down melodic themes like Sanchez’s “Rock” and Lightcap’s “Traipse.” Interestingly, the album is split in two: Sanchez’s and Lightcap’s charts are sequenced first, while Taylor’s compositions fill the second half. Lightcap’s “Specifica” and Sanchez’s “No Brainer” spark the most heated interplay, yielding to the grace of Taylor’s ballads “Opal” and “Miriam,” the broken-up misterioso figures of “Level,” the quasi-calypso jaunt of “Pablo” and the turbulent bounce of the closing “Pascal.” It could be that the Circle Down trio is a cousin to Sticks & Stones, Taylor’s co-led unit with Matana Roberts and Josh Abrams, although Sanchez gives this new material a broader harmonic signature — meticulously voiced, precise yet impulsive.