Chicago Underground Duo - Hyperglyph (2025)

Chicago Underground Duo’s Hyperglyph is a bold, shape-shifting return after 11 years, merging global rhythms, deep electronics, and decades of shared chemistry into one striking avant-jazz statement. For more than three decades, composer/trumpeter/synthesist Rob Mazurek and composer/percussionist Chad Taylor have been in near-constant creative orbit. From their work in Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra to collaborations with guitarist Jeff Parker in various Chicago Underground configurations, to intersections with Tortoise and the Isotope 217 project, their partnership has been a steady current in the evolution of the avant-jazz and post-rock sound. Now, for the first time in 11 years, their Chicago Underground Duo returns with Hyperglyph, an album that distills years of friendship, shared history, and musical exploration into one singular statement.

Recorded over three days in May 2024 at International Anthem Studios in Chicago with engineer Dave Vettraino, Hyperglyph reflects the duo’s deep, personal continuity. Mazurek and Taylor have allowed the project to come and go as life dictated, each time reuniting with a renewed sense of purpose. Taylor recalls meeting Mazurek in 1988 when he was just 15, and still considers him his longest-running collaborator and closest friend. Mazurek notes that the timing has always been about when it feels right, describing the bond between them as a constant through both their music and their lives.

The Chicago Underground Duo has always stood apart from the pair’s other work, blending influences from visionaries like Wadada Leo Smith, the exploratory duets of Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell, and the cut-and-paste studio approach of Miles Davis and Teo Macero, with deep electronic textures inspired by Bernard Parmegiani, Éliane Radigue, and Morton Subotnick. On Hyperglyph, those inspirations merge with rhythms drawn from Nigeria, Mali, Zimbabwe, and Ghana, adding a kinetic global pulse to the sound.

The title refers to complex geometric forms that, when arranged in three-dimensional space, open new ways of seeing. That sense of perception-shifting design runs through the music, from the sculpted polyrhythms to the shifting timbres of synths and horns.

Opening track “Click Song” sets the tone with a raw, blown-out horn chant from Mazurek, doubled on tuned bells and locked into Taylor’s muscular stereo-overdubbed polyrhythms. Synth bass enters and exits with deliberate force, while the bells and horn gradually break from their psalm into free-flowing improvisation, all anchored by the resonant thump of Taylor’s kick drum.

With Hyperglyph, Mazurek and Taylor reaffirm the Chicago Underground Duo’s place as one of the most inventive and enduring collaborations to emerge from the city’s fertile creative scene. It is music that honors its past while continuing to push toward new, uncharted shapes.