Tom Lippincott, Ode to the Possible Review

Tom Lippincott’s Ode to the Possible Through Motion

By Nolan DeBuke

Recurring drum figures, doubled melodies, group improvisational swells, and angular compaction and releases give Ode to the Possible the feeling of a continuously unfolding ensemble work. Throughout the album, guitarist and composer Tom Lippincott treats composition and improvisation as parts of a single, evolving process. The record moves through improvised interludes, rhythmic regroupings, timbre resets, and repeated shifts between grooves. Themes rarely settle long enough to become fixed destinations. Instead, Lippincott, saxophonist David Fernandez, bassist Marty Quinn, and drummer Lucas Apostoleris keep redirecting the music through ensemble hits, transition figures, chord patterns, expanded scale color, bass counter-motion, and changes in pulse density.

That motion begins in “Preface/Overture 25.” The delayed, effected electric-guitar atmosphere gradually gives way to a medium-tempo rhythmic figure that Fernandez eventually doubles before carrying the melody forward. Lippincott provides simultaneous chordal accompaniment and melodic unison lines, while Quinn reinforces the harmonic movement. Apostoleris keeps the pulse flexible, shifting between loose swing, snare-march patterns, and cymbal washes that define the momentum. The composition moves through sections by returning to rhythmic material rather than announcing formal boundaries outright. The intro figure reappears, an ascending line opens the next area, and held rubato chords stretch the ending without fully dissolving the thread.

“Bell Tower” reflects the ensemble’s language as they approach the performance through accumulation. Apostoleris opens alone with rhythmic patterns on the snare that later return as connective material inside the larger piece. Once the quartet enters, Lippincott’s eight-string voicings cover melody and harmony simultaneously, spreading across multiple octaves beneath Fernandez’s warm, slightly biting saxophone tone. The improvisational section changes the ground underneath Fernandez rather than simply clearing space around him. Quinn enters with a broken feel as the band shifts into straight-eighth motion, and Lippincott gradually thickens the setting. He moves from moody sustained chords into distortion, intervalic voicings, and single-line responses. Apostoleris moves toward a funk-oriented groove centered on the snare, while Fernandez pushes upward into angular intervals, rhythmic fragments, squeals, and upper-register expressions.

The release from that intensity happens gradually and audibly. Lippincott thins the density of his backing figures. Fernandez backs away from the upper register. Apostoleris pulls the groove inward before guiding the quartet back to the melody. The drum solo keeps the composition tied to its earlier material rather than stepping outside it. Apostoleris begins mainly from the snare before spreading across the kit, carrying rhythmic motives from the melody and ensemble hits into the solo itself. Lippincott answers with large held chords, and the quartet re-enters through a repeated rhythmic accompaniment figure that behaves almost like a non-Latin montuno. When the head returns, added guitar layers and a left-channel acoustic strum widen the texture without changing the piece’s underlying logic. The piece keeps redirecting itself through those transformations.

“An Inhabitant of Carcosa” puts the album’s ensemble language in an especially easy-to-hear framework. Cymbal activity and flowing sixteenth-note movement support open guitar voicings, while Fernandez’s melody stays direct even as the harmony underneath keeps shifting. At the end of phrases, Fernandez, Quinn, and Lippincott land defining ensemble hits that act as cadential markers before the next section opens. Lippincott’s solo grows from rhythmic motives, wide interval leaps, and intervallic cells rather than long linear runs. Afterward, he continues filling around the melody instead of fully withdrawing, making the conclusion feel like an extension of the solo.

The same piece also reveals how thoroughly improvisation stays embedded inside ensemble movement. During Quinn’s bass solo, Lippincott locks into a rhythmic figure that Apostoleris doubles and reshapes around the kit, keeping the pulse active without crowding the bass. During ensemble sections, Quinn moves with upper-register melodic phrases, and both Lippincott and Apostoleris answer fragments of his rhythm in real time. As the section builds, Lippincott moves into ascending voicings, Fernandez rejoins, and the quartet transitions into simultaneous improvisation between guitar and saxophone. The lines remain busy but coordinated, often sharing similar contours and rhythmic direction. Quinn keeps the center stable while Apostoleris pushes into a more active fusion pulse. The final tutti figure lands like a cadence instead of a pasted-on ending.

The interludes are central to Ode to the Possible’s pacing because they repeatedly change the listener’s sense of movement. “Interlude One” compresses the record’s escalation-and-release behavior into less than a minute. Lippincott uses distortion and delay, Fernandez jumps across wide intervals, Apostoleris abandons fixed groove for low rumbling texture, and Quinn gives the density a partial floor before the quartet releases the pressure together. “Interlude Two” narrows the frame to bass resonance, chime-like electronics, and delay-heavy guitar atmosphere, with Quinn handling melodic and chordal motion at the same time. “Interlude Four” isolates Apostoleris’s kit language through tom figures, hi-hat movement, and polyrhythmic phrases spread across the drums.

The larger ensemble pieces continue moving between propulsion and harmonically expanded colors. “Exit Strategy” begins with guitar and bass locked into a rhythmic figure before Fernandez enters with the melody. Lippincott doubles the line while keeping chordal motion underneath it, and Apostoleris colors around the straight-eighth feel with cymbal detail and shifting accents. The composition develops more through moving voicings, inner-line motion, and changes in texture density than through singable melody. Lippincott’s slight Rhodes-like vibrato adds swirl to the chordal figures. Around it, the quartet repeatedly opens the time without fully abandoning pulse.

That breathing motion becomes the piece’s central organizing device. Dense sections release into space for guitar and saxophone, then rebuild as bass and drums re-enter underneath them. Quinn shifts into a grounding figure while Lippincott solos melodically against his own moving chord voicings and Fernandez improvises beside him. As the texture thickens, Lippincott adds heavier delay and synth-guitar color. Fernandez responds by simplifying his phrasing rhythmically, leaving space around the guitar’s upper-register activity. The return to the main theme can be heard happening in the texture itself: the solo lines shed pressure, the clean guitar sound returns, and guitar and saxophone move back into a doubled melody.

“Trail of Tears” offers another angle of the ensemble’s collective motion. A rhythmic figure passes through saxophone, guitar, bass, and drums, with Apostoleris coloring between the hits. Lippincott uses a small ascending line to signal the start of the improvisational section, where guitar and saxophone again solo simultaneously. Quinn keeps conversational movement inside the groove, and Apostoleris maintains a sixteenth-note funk pulse even as the quartet slips briefly into swing.

Later in the piece, Lippincott digs harder into the swing feel with distorted guitar and passing-tone voicings while Fernandez takes a more overt lead. The bridge shifts mood through familiar harmonic movement, but the quartet still treats the form as active material rather than a fixed sequence. During Apostoleris’s solo, Lippincott keeps the chords present underneath him, and the rhythmic material from the tune remains audible inside the drumming. The final return leaves more open air between ensemble figures, with Apostoleris coloring the gaps instead of filling them completely.

The quieter pieces use the same ensemble thinking. “Sisters and Brothers” begins with a clean, delayed eight-string guitar, the pick attack audible as Lippincott rakes across the strings. Fernandez carries the melody while the guitar doubles it and continues the harmony underneath. Apostoleris stays on brushes with a relaxed backbeat, and Quinn anchors the piece in a spacious halftime feel. During Quinn’s upper-register solo, the rhythm stretches into quarter notes, whole notes, and lightly spaced eighth-note movement while cymbal color keeps the texture open. The transition out of the solo arrives through an ascending figure, increased drum activity, sticks replacing brushes, and a gradual return to the melody with slight variation before the closing ritardando.

“Rational Peace” functions as a timbre release point. Lippincott switches to steel-string acoustic guitar, playing rolling chords where arpeggio figures spill out of sustained harmony. The pulse breathes without fully disappearing. Electric guitar delay later thickens the atmosphere, Quinn keeps the bass movement sparse, and Apostoleris quietly directs the flow with brushes and cymbal shaping. Fernandez enters on soprano without changing the harmonic atmosphere, extending the same modal color already present in the guitar voicings. Near the end, the pulse loosens into cymbal swells and rubato space, allowing the altered tones and upper extensions to hang in the air rather than resolve sharply.

“Lynchian” shows the quartet’s rhythmic language feel is fully internalized. A descending ensemble figure locks into call-and-response with Apostoleris’s groove, and the motive keeps mutating through denser variations and augmented rhythmic shapes. In the solo section, Lippincott uses sustained distortion while Fernandez improvises alongside him. Quinn maintains the rhythmic foundation underneath them, and Apostoleris keeps the groove centered even as he responds differently to guitar and saxophone activity across the kit. As the harmony grows more abstract, Lippincott’s lines become sharper, more angular, and increasingly machine-like through his effects processing. A descending tutti figure signals the drum solo, where Apostoleris preserves the original rhythmic motive on the bass drum while spreading color outward across the rest of the kit before dropping back into the groove.

The electronic frame matters because it gives the album its larger contour. “Preface” grows from delay and rhythmic repetition into full quartet movement; “Epilogue” reverses that process through synth-guitar swells, glitch sounds in the left channel, delayed abstract chords, and slowly emerging harmony that eventually fades into digital silence.

Throughout Ode to the Possible, composition, improvisation, timbre, and ensemble interaction remain inseparable because they can be heard acting on one another to create the music’s character. As rhythmic figures return in altered form, grooves loosen and tighten, voicings shift internally, drums redirect momentum, bass lines stabilize transitions, and electronic textures open temporary space around the quartet’s continuous motion before it moves forward again, the theme of movement is conveyed.