+ Ken Allars (solo)

Sydney drummer/composer/producer Laurence Pike launches his fifth solo album Possible Utopias for Jazz Quintet, joined by pianist Novak Manojlovic and saxophonist Jack Stoneham.

One of the leading figures of Australia’s creative music community, Pike has a long history of coloring outside the lines, not just in his solo recordings—including four albums for the Leaf label between 2018 and 2024—but also in Warp Records alumni PVT; Szun Waves (alongside saxophonist Jack Wyllie and Border Community’s Luke Abbott); two acclaimed duo recordings with legendary pianist Mike Nock; Triosk, which recorded an album with Jan Jelinek in 2003; and avant-punk titans Liars, whom he joined in late 2018.

Of Possible Utopias for Jazz Quintet, Pike says, “My loose concept was: What does music sound like when the expectations of late capitalism are removed from it? How might a jazz musician from an idealised culture of the future, or even another world, utilise musical language when the conventions of style and marketing are no longer a factor in music making?”

That inquiry, he says, connects to his “guiding principle: that the purpose of music is to access something bigger than the individual, and reveal a sense of possibility and freedom in the world to the listener. To create an understanding that the future can be something other than what we imagined or expect, even unconsciously.”

Possible Utopias for Jazz Quintet is a point in a continuum, a voice in a conversation, a question with no obvious answer: How can the search for otherness in music manifest something true about ourselves?