Dancing in the Dark

The drums arrive first and they arrive with authority — Moses Boyd does not ease you into this one. The opening establishes his credentials immediately: this is someone for whom rhythm is not accompaniment but argument, not background but foreground. The piece churns with an energy that blends jazz drumming's improvisational freedom with something harder and more contemporary — UK club culture, grime's kinetic tension, the bass-heavy architecture of electronic music — all of it filtered through the acoustic live-band tradition Boyd comes from. Where "2 Far Gone" is interior and still, this track is exterior and in motion, a composition that seems to be generating its own weather. The title works ironically: there is nothing passive about this music, nothing dim or uncertain. It occupies the same emotional register as defiance, or that specific kind of joy that is almost indistinguishable from anger — the exhilaration of going very hard at something you believe in. The ensemble playing reflects Boyd's background as a collaborator within the South London jazz scene that emerged in the mid-2010s; the musicians respond to each other with the shorthand of people who have shared countless late-night sessions. It is music that demands physical presence — you cannot stay still through this piece, not because it insists on dancing but because it generates a forward pressure that the body simply absorbs. For moments when you need to move through the world with momentum, this is the soundtrack.