THE outer sleeve illustration of Jon Irabagon’s new album, Server Farm, has microscopic humans walking down a huge and forbidding avenue of gross technology. The poem called Spy in the inner sleeve is of a bee, its “kaleidoscopic partitions” holding the menace and “lens of a tiny camera.” The sounds of the record and the pictures on its sleeve are dimensions of a now-times AI nightmare.

Irabagon was born in Chicago in 1978. “I’m first-generation Filipino-American, my father was an electrician and my mother a chemist. Neither my parents or my siblings play music, but there was always plenty of music in the house: pop, country, smooth jazz, rock — even elevator music!”

“I took piano lessons from my aunt, then started on saxophone in the fifth grade. I didn’t take it seriously until high school, until school band director Tom Beckwith nurtured my love for jazz and introduced me to Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley and Sonny Stitt, my first saxophone inspirations.”

“I grew up in Chicago, falling in love with jazz, an American art form. My Filipino culture makes itself present in the open sections of my music — our family parties were always fun, loud and rumbustious. I love all that, and my music loves it as well.”

What about the meanings of Server Farm, particularly of the fable/poem of the bee?

“I hope it brings awareness and action to the growing threat of AI. I definitely had a story in mind when I was going through its compositional process, and hopefully listeners can create their own as they listen. Each track is special to me. They all convey different ideas and philosophies on the topic. I’m especially happy with the final Spy track as for the first time it features my own lyrics (as well as sax effects pedals) on my own album.”

With the outrageous political dominion now held by AI supremos like Musk, how can musicians resist such power?

“The first part of resisting this form of control is to be aware of it and start discussions. The album has already had an effect by getting people talking about the next steps. There’s a lot of research and outreach to be done.”

“I actually attempted to recreate AI processes when I composed the music. I listened incessantly to as much of the recorded history from each band member for several months, looking for repeated patterns, ideas or gestures from each musician, and then incorporated them into the compositional process. This way I was able to gain as much pertinent information as possible and then repurpose it all for my own use.

“These nine musicians are some of my favourite people and players in the world, so I wanted to make sure they had plenty of freedom throughout the album, with many textural and improvisational choices. It was a delicate balance between composing just enough material to get my ideas across and encouraging these musicians to shine and be themselves.”

And I thought, isn’t this also what Ellington, Basie, Gil Evans and other orchestral maestros have done? To write their compositions or arrangements to fully express the genius of their members, whether it was Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams or Paul Gonsalves for Ellington, Lester Young or Buck Clayton for Basie or Miles Davis for Evans?

Certainly the full artistry of pianist Matt Mitchell, guitarists Miles Okazaki and Wendy Eisenberg, galactic trumpeter Peter Evans, violinist Mazz Swift and Irabagon himself on tenor and soprano sax are fully delivered on Server Farm.

The album puts jazz again in the centre of the world of ideas and action. Remember Irabagon’s enslaved bee: “its wings a frantic blur/ its body majestic and pure”, but its nature now corrupted, made servile by dragons like Musk and Trump.

It mustn’t be a metaphor for any of us.

Server Farm is released by Irrabagast Records.