Featured Artist: Interoceanico 3

CD Title: Confluencia

Year: 2007

Record Label: MOMO Records

Style: Progressive

Musicians:

Hiroya Tsukamoto (guitar), Moto Fukushima (bass), Franco Pinna (drums)

Review:

The moniker identifies the trio as an inter-oceanic entity, featuring a Japanese and Argentinean contingent.  As they merge a worldly perspective into an upbeat jazz-guitar trio format.  Think of rolling waves of sound and climactic opuses, where tuneful themes attain a seamless coexistence with jazz improvisation amid the band’s forward-looking gait. 

Electric bassist Moto Fukushima employs a fat, bottom-end sound here.  Consequently, the musicians’ respective stylizations render a complementing vibe.  They morph chops, passion and warmth throughout this divergent track mix.  Guitarist Hiroya Tsukamoto generates some heat on occasion, but for the most part, his artisanship consists of nimble chord voicings, genteel harmonics and fluid single note phrasings.  In effect, the musicians reshape a contemporary world-groove vision into a comprehensive and stylistic string of works.  You’ll hear a Latin element to coincide with Asian folk inferences, progressive-jazz and much more.

They prove that variety is indeed the spice of life while maintaining a cohesive group-based methodology.  Moreover, the artists skirt the free-zone during their playful 3-way dialogues on the piece titled, “South.” And convey razor-sharp precision designed with ascending choruses on “Sakhalin.”  At the end of the day, this unit should conceivably enjoy widespread appeal within the global jazz spectrum.  (Zealously recommended…)

Artist's Website: http://www.hiroyatsukamoto.com

Reviewed by: Glenn Astarita

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