Enrique Haneine, Conceivable Directions Review

Conceivable Directions: Enrique Haneine’s Creative Directing From The Drums

By Nolan DeBuke

On Conceivable Directions, drummer and composer Enrique Haneine presents a body of work that listens as carefully as it speaks. The album unfolds as a creative collection of compositions rather than a sustained inquiry into motion, awareness, and collective decision-making. Haneine makes music concerned with how ideas move through people, time, and sound.

Haneine’s central achievement is rhythmic authority through his ability to fuse groove and interaction into a single, continuous intelligence. Throughout the album, forward motion never pauses to accommodate complexity; it absorbs it. Groove is not a backdrop against which events occur, but the organizing principle that allows the ensemble to behave as a coherent, thinking organism.

That quality is apparent from the opening track, “Inconceivable Truth.” The drums establish the terrain immediately with a firm and grounded feel. When the horns enter with an inviting melody colored by subtle Middle Eastern inflections, the groove does not yield or recede. Instead, it becomes the connective tissue through which melody, bass movement, and improvisation communicate. Thomas Heberer’s trumpet solo emerges warm and melodic, not riding atop the rhythm section but speaking within it, while Jay Anderson’s bass engages in active dialogue while providing support. Haneine’s drumming here exemplifies the album’s core ethic: timekeeping and interaction are not separate roles, but one unified act.

This sense of unity enables Conceivable Directions to explore density without ever sounding crowded. On “Four Ahead,” density is designed. An ensemble tutti introduction sets the tonal and rhythmic vocabulary, which is then redistributed across the ensemble. The drums, bass, and Christof Knoche’s bass clarinet carry the introductory figure as an underlying ostinato, while trumpet and cornet trace countermelodies that both complement and resist the foundation beneath them. As the piece unfolds, parts diverge and reconverge with clear intent, culminating in a striking moment of simultaneous soloing by cornet and trumpet. The effect is developmental, giving the music a sense of story shaped through parts that unify and separate with purpose.

Haneine’s compositional sensibility is equally evident in Conceivable Directions. “Unique Array of Swirls” reveals another dimension of his touch, as brushes replace sticks and the tempo relaxes into a slow, contemplative ballad. Here, emotional weight is carried through texture and space. The horns engage in creative counterpoint, their lines colored by scale choices that evoke Middle Eastern hues, acting as thematic statements. That color persists organically, passing from melody to counterline to Knoche’s bass clarinet solo, which unfolds with patience and depth. The influence feels like a natural shared tonal language rather than a spotlighted feature.

Throughout the album, this approach to color is consistent and telling. Cultural influence functions as continuity embedded in melodic contours, intervallic choices, and improvisational logic. Because no single voice is tasked with carrying that color, it remains present even as roles shift and textures change. The ensemble communicates together, allowing influence to circulate naturally.

That circulation becomes especially vivid on “Very Slick,” where bass clarinet and drums open with a contemporary, forward-leaning groove. The ensemble enters in layers, horn stabs adding propulsion as the melody is first supported, then gradually absorbed into a collective rhythmic statement. Haneine’s snare work operates as a primary voice within the groove, creating a deep pocket that feels robust and multi-textured.

A clear distillation of Haneine’s vision arrives in “Perpetual Insights,” a track that sustains his groove’s internal logic from start to finish. The groove is established and continually reaffirmed through interaction, allowing improvisation and composition to coexist without hierarchy. The sense of motion is unbroken, because change itself is integrated into the music’s forward flow.

Across its thirteen tracks, Conceivable Directions favors depth in process over proclamation. It is an album that rewards listening. Haneine’s leadership is felt through the clarity of the structures he sets in motion and the freedom they afford his collaborators: Heberer’s trumpet, Kirk Knuffke’s cornet, Knoche’s bass clarinet, and Anderson’s bass all move with agency, guided by a shared rhythmic and melodic understanding. Conceivable Directions demonstrates that groove becomes structure, structure becomes conversation, and color becomes atmosphere.  All in service of a music that evolves through awareness rather than assertion.