"Mahanthappa and Iyer are emblematic of their generation of jazz musicians. They have found ways to tweak conventional forms to find their voices, rather than laying waste to the structures that preceded them." - WALL STREET JOURNAL

"Mother Tongue is a fine test of the comparisons between Mahanthappa and Steve Coleman. While Mahanthappa shares Coleman's ability to effortlessly stream unusually shaped phrases, their respective sounds are quite different." - DOWN BEAT

"Mahanthappa, the commanding presence at the helm, has a tone that is hard, biting, and emotionally alive. He plays with blinding speed but also draws upon the ardent legato cries associated with Indian double-reed instruments or Hindustani vocalists." - JAZZTIMES

Since the release of Mother Tongue in 2004, Rudresh Mahanthappa has moved to the forefront of the new generation of composers and alto players in jazz. The time in between has seen him take honors in the DownBeat Jazz Critics Poll, receive the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for excellence in composition, and receive a Rockefeller grant to compose music for his Dakshina Ensemble featuring Kadri Goplanath, amongst other things. The time has also allowed Mahanthappa to once again look to the outside world and draw from a system of order for his next project. The result is Pi Recordings' new release Code Book. Mahanthappa has composed the music on Code Book stemming from ideas and concepts related to cryptography. The varied systems provided the groundwork for him to approach the DNA of the compositions on this CD from fresh and previously unexplored angles. A well-known standard could be transformed into an entirely fresh piece, notes could be associated with words and ordered as such, and rhythms further coded and ordered. All of this is to say that another system of order has been applied to music, but has been done so with such care and thought that the result sounds in no way formulated. Instead, it is the work of a composers' hand deftly working within a system, but creating something entirely organic. This CD is a beautiful addition to Mahanthappa's growing catalog of releases and a mature statement from a voice that we now see scaling new heights.