After releasing a series of ambient, electronic based albums, including his all-time solo masterpiece from 2019 called Alternate Landscapes, as well as a brilliant album called Across The Evening, created in 2020 with Estonian guitarist Robert Jürjendal, Oregon-based guitar conceptualist Jon Durant returns in 2021 with a splendid new CD from his group Burnt Belief - their fourth entitled Mutual Isolation. Isolation might not be the best term to describe this album, as start to finish Mutual Isolation is brimming with a new found sense of musical collaboration on what is Jon’s first new album with Burnt Belief in several years.

Of course, there was the Edwin Durant Kovtun that Jon made in 2019 with Ukrainian singer Anna Kovtun and bass ace Colin Edwin, the other main half of Burnt Belief. Harking back to earlier Burnt Belief albums, Mutual Isolation, featuring Jon once again teamed with Colin Edwin, is very much a group effort with both artists joined this time by Vinny Sabatino (drums), Aleksei Saks (trumpet) and Andi Pupato (percussion). Invoking the consequences of the title of the album, the 9-track, 54-minute Mutual Isolation was recorded during the pandemic by these artists using what is called a “distance working method”.

Taking a somewhat different approach from previous Burnt Belief albums, on Mutual Isolation Colin Edwin plays double bass giving the album a more grounded feel while imparting a more natural resonance to the sound. Colin also adds in rhythm programming and audio processing that gives the album a further spatial quality. Compared to Jon’s ambient music masterpiece, Alternate Landscapes, this 2021 Burnt Belief comes across as a contemporary jazz-rock fusion masterwork spotlighting Jon’s memorable and often quite melodic lead guitar lines.

With Colin Edwin’s double bass serving as an anchor and Jon Durant’s electric lead guitar and 'cloud-guitar' soaring freely, drummer Vinny Sabatino’s skillful drumming gives the entire album a proficient jazz-rock edge, while trumpet master Aleksei Saks and percussionist Andi Pupato bring in yet another unique shading to the music that breathes fresh life into the mix. It’s been said that with its enveloping elements of improvisation based around strong thematic compositions, ambient textural atmospherics, subtle electronics and elements of progressive jazz/rock, the music of Burnt Belief is sometimes hard to classify. That may be true, yet with the 2021 release of Mutual Isolation, Burnt Belief spans the distance to reach further innovative and mind-bending heights.