I am not a fan of “jam bands.” I love a whole lot of improvised music, obviously, but there’s a big difference between improvisation and jamming. Emergency Group are an improvising ensemble composed of guitarist Jonathan Byerley, keyboardist Robert Boston, bassist Dave Mandl, and drummer Andreas Brade. They’re from Brooklyn, but they’re trying hard to overcome that, so don’t hold it against them.

They started out as a trio; Mandl joined in 2020. Their first rehearsal/session with him was recorded on cassette and released three years later as Crisis in Mono (First Session), one of three releases in 2023 so far. I haven’t heard it. I have heard the follow-up, Inspection of Cruelty, and their third album, Venal Twin.

Inspection of Cruelty consists of two long tracks recorded live in the studio in November 2022. They’re each between 22 and 24 minutes long, perfect for one side of an LP (or a cassette, which is the format they actually came out on). When I listen to it, I hear elements of Miles Davis’s 1970 band (Gary Bartz, Keith Jarrett, Michael Henderson, Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira), early Santana, Can, and a splash of SubArachnoid Space.

Venal Twin, recorded in January 2023, is four tracks long and runs nearly 54 minutes. It’s more varied than its predecessor, shifting through deep, trippy funk, psychedelic hard rock, and some relatively adventurous improvisatory explorations. People have made comparisons to On the Corner-era Miles, but I don’t hear that at all. There are portions of “Dime Champ” that remind me of the Grateful Dead’s Fillmore West 1969 box, the only thing by that band that I’ve ever enjoyed (and that only a little). Brade’s drumming is an avalanche, though, so you stay awake. The next track, “Pyramid Street,” lets Byerley off the chain, and he emits some extremely crunchy, distorted noises while Boston takes a moonlight-on-the-highway organ solo. It definitely feels like these guys are aiming for classic jazz-rock fusion, but since they’re in full improv mode, the music never quite comes together. Say what you will about Mahavishnu Orchestra or Return to Forever or Tony Williams Lifetime, they wrote tunes.

I would very much like to hear Emergency Group start composing more formally structured music. These two releases prove that they’ve got a collective voice, and that they can spontaneously generate some pretty strong riffs. With just a little bit of discipline, they could be absolute monsters.