For those unaware, American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

A more playful, experimental version of that quote could serve as the mission statement for the adventurous Amsterdam-based sextet Spinifex. The band’s music is a full-throttle embrace of the visceral and cerebral, a spirited blend of free improv abandon, avant-jazz complexity, punk rock aggression and compulsively infectious grooves.

As artistic director and alto saxophonist Tobias Klein explains it, “We want to engage people intellectually with our music, but at the same time we want to overwhelm people in a way that works well with audiences in a sweaty nightclub atmosphere.”

Nine albums and almost 20 years into their existence, Spinifex has proved remarkably agile at splitting that difference, despite those who insist that Klein’s divergent goals amount to cognitive dissonance.

The title of the band’s latest album, Undrilling the Hole, is a declaration of its paradoxical success, echoed by most of the song titles contained within: “Embrace the Contradictions,” “Explode the Paradox,” “Admire the Ambiguities.”

Unlike prior Spinifex releases, which shared credits between the band’s several gifted composers, Undrilling the Hole was entirely written by Klein. The focused set openly declares its insistence on audaciously threading that challenging needle – even if Klein himself is hard pressed to explain why exactly it works so well.

1. Embrace the Contradictions
2. Undrilling the Hole
3. Tatiana
4. Explode the Paradox
5. Admire the Ambiguities
6. Boiling Up Beautifully
7. The Big Brother

With a sound like a combination of free improv, punkrock and other typically Western contemporary music the one minute, and yet beneath the surface you can also discover ancient cyclical rhythms from Turkish and Indian musical cultures and more, the new recording opens on the vitally propellent Embrace the Contradictions and the jaggedly organic title cut Undrilling the Hole, and then we get brought forth the funky grooves within Tatiana and the craftly cultured Explode the Paradox.

Along next is the free flowing, all-embracing musical majesties of Admire the Ambiguities which is in turn followed seamlessly by the playfully melodic Boiling Up Beautifully, this incredibly impassioned album coming to a close on the soulfully distinctive funk of The Big Brother.

“I try to exploit our diversity every time I write for the band,” Klein explains. “I always want there to be elements of very different types of music, combined into something organic that you can no longer take apart into its individual components. It becomes one.”

Musicians:
Tobias Klein – alto saxophone, artistic direction
Bart Maris – trumpet
John Dikeman – tenor saxophone
Jasper Stadhouders – guitar
Gonçalo Almeida – bass
Philipp Moser – drums

Spinifex - Embrace the Contradictions [Official Music Video]

Official Purchase Link