I Want More – Donny McCaslin

I Want More is an album by saxophonist Donny McCaslin. Here, the saxophone leads with visceral intensity, creating a language that drifts into a territory where jazz absorbs the energy of rock and electronic music, without losing its improvisational core.

The quartet—Jason Lindner (synths and Wurlitzer), Tim Lefebvre (electric bass), and Mark Guiliana (drums)—operates as a high-voltage unit. There are no rigid hierarchies: the synths expand the harmonic space, the electric bass anchors and distorts at once, and the drums fragment the pulse, reconstructing it in real time. McCaslin inserts himself into that flow with a muscular, almost vocal sound that cuts through the texture rather than resting on top of it.

The compositions advance through the accumulation of energy. “Stria” opens with an architecture that already contains the album's tension; “Landsdown” introduces a hybrid dimension where the urban and the orchestral coexist without friction; the title track closes the journey with a sense of open insistence, as if the discourse didn't end, but rather projected itself beyond the record itself.

There is an evident structural precision, yet it never imposes itself upon the impulse. Each track articulates an unstable balance that moves from control to overflow. The writing defines the frame; the band expands it to the edge. It is on that edge where the album finds its identity.

Hard bop transforms into something else—denser, more direct, more physical. I Want More is an album that reveals new forms of sonic existence in contemporary jazz.