Anna Butterss, John Raymond, Ben Lumsdaine - Beginningless

On Beginningless, Anna Butterss, John Raymond, and Ben Lumsdaine combine acoustic instruments and effects to create a nocturnal, neon landscape both grounded and otherworldly. Recorded live over two days in a Los Angeles studio, the album expands the trumpet-bass-drums format through shared intuition, fluid textures, and patient, elastic interplay. The music is entirely improvised, with little overdubbing or post-production: what you hear is essentially the sound of three musicians discovering the music together in the room, using pedals and processing as extensions of their instruments.

The trio draws on musical relationships stretching back more than a decade. Butterss and Lumsdaine first met as students in Bloomington, Indiana, in 2010, beginning a collaboration that has continued through numerous projects, including Butterss’ recent solo work. After Butterss moved to Los Angeles, Raymond moved to Bloomington in 2017 to begin teaching at Indiana University where he and Lumsdaine developed their own musical rapport through Call & Response, a weekly jazz series Lumsdaine founded as a space for improvisation and visiting musicians. Raymond inherited the series when Lumsdaine moved to Los Angeles in 2019, and when Butterss and Lumsdaine returned to Bloomington together in 2024, a performance became the genesis of the trio. This history is audible on Beginningless. It captures musicians with a deep understanding of one another allowing that familiarity to lead them somewhere new.

The trio cites Jon Hassell and the innovative Fly, the trio of Mark Turner, Larry Grenadier, and Jeff Ballard, as touchstones. But Beginningless arrives at its own particular balance between atmosphere and immediacy. Unlike the live, improvised performances that often become the raw material for Butterss’ work with SML and Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, these improvisations were made in the studio, allowing the trio to listen closely and continually vary their approach to sound, space, decay, resonance, electronic color, mood. The result feels spontaneous and atmospheric without sacrificing the physical presence of three people playing together. An endlessly rewarding LP, Beginningless is novel every listen.