For those unaware, Nick Fraser has been a drummer and composer in the Toronto new jazz and improvised music community for over twenty years.

His quartet features saxophonist Tony Malaby, Andrew Downing and Rob Clutton. For ten years, he co-led the group Drumheller. Other projects that occupy him regularly are Peripheral Vision, Eucalyptus, Ugly Beauties and the Lina Allemano Four.

The upcoming trio album Areas reunites his celebrated trio with Tony Malaby (saxophones) and Kris Davis (piano) while also bringing in John Kameel Farah, whose refined electronic textures appear as three interludes throughout the record.

Set for release on April 10th, 2026 via Toronto’s Elastic Recordings on LP, CD, and digital formats, the album marks a shift from the drive of its predecessor Zoning (2019, Astral Spirits) toward a more atmospheric soundworld punctuated with moments of vigor and dynamism.

The music unfolds through expansive, unpredictable forms and moments of striking lyricism. Farah’s brief, dreamlike interludes — constructed from digitally transformed interactions between Malaby and Fraser — frame and divide the album, adding an element of mystery that ties the pieces together.

1. In The Wreckage
2. Mimic
3. Area
4. Howling Circuits
5. There Are Other Ways
6. Sketch 57
7. Brood

With Fraser’s compositions fully exploring the trio’s sonic range, moving fluidly between quiet and intensity, drive and delicacy, up first on this new recording is the steeled industrialism of In The Wreckage and then we get the emotively restrained, for the most part Mimic and then comes the jaggedly spiked Area, the hauntingly ethereal Howling Circuits, with the rhythmically assured There Are Other Ways and the warmly emotive Sketch 57 rounding things off, the beautifully sculpted, and aptly-titled Brood bringing things to a tidy close.

Musicians:
Nick Fraser: Drums, Piano Harp*
Tony Malaby: Saxophones
Kris Davis: Piano
John Kameel Farah: Electronics and Sound Processing*
(* Track 1, 4, 7 only)

Official Purchase Link