Chicago keyboardist Jimmy Lacy’s SiP project generates some deeply introversive music, “in sync with my own clock and rhythms,” as he puts it. Motifs cycle patiently, imperfections settle in comfortably, periodic episodes of muted jazz expression refrain from breaking the spell.
SiP’s self-absorbed meditations, however modest and informal in their presentation, are nonetheless generous and very welcoming. Perhaps it’s because this undertaking was initially workshopped not in some mountainside ashram but in a Chicago cocktail lounge. Tasked with three-hour stretches of steady but unobtrusive mood music, Lacy used the time to explore the mechanics of long-form, meditative music, designed not to agitate but to insinuate.
Radio sessions followed, the intimacy at a distance of the medium further affirming the essential character of Sip’s music, evident on this second album – present without insistence, persuasive without pressure.
