Under the stage name Jerk, Brooklyn-based saxophonist and beat producer Joshua Kinney has been exploring the intersections of jazz and hip-hop for the past few years with a select group of like-minded musicians. Having released three EPs and one full-length beat tape, Jerk follows up with the new album Some Cosmic Shift (DeepMatter). The album’s title is reflected not just in space-filled songs with names such as “Phasing” and “Celestial Voices,” but also in Kinney’s shifts of perception of his life and career. As he describes on Jerk’s Bandcamp page, after graduating college, Kinney was holding down a day job giving music lessons while gigging at night. He was not exactly enthused by the way he was being treated by his employers, something he groused about while stuck in traffic for two hours a day. Sitting at the piano between lessons, he found an emotional outlet in his music, actually creating most of the tunes on Some Cosmic Shift during those times. “Composing and playing became less academic and more cathartic,” he explains, “and it was a balance between the two I had never experienced.” His Jerk colleagues assist in expressing this newfound worldview on tunes such as the gently grooving “Earthrise,” which closes out the album on a peaceful note. Kinney, keyboardist Jean Matthieu Carvin and trumpeter Carey Ozmun all play with great warmth as they orbit the hip-hop rhythms laid down by bassist Mikey Migloire and drummer Martine Wade.