Featured Artist: Ravish Momin's Trio Tarana

CD Title: Climbing The Banyan Tree

Year: 2005

Record Label: Clean Feed

Style: Free Jazz / Avante Garde

Review:

Released several months ago, there seems to be a relatively unanimous consensus that drummer Ravish Momin’s Trio Tarana is in the running for a 2005, top-ten pick.  And it’s easy to discern, that regardless of polls and lists, Momin has crafted a winner here.  Simply put, the band has created a unique identity within the progressive-jazz genre via its upbeat mode of attack.  As they merge North African and East Indian modal characteristics with layered rhythmic swirls and scathing jazz improvisations. 

Violinist Jason Lao Hwang’s streaming and emotive staccato lines are fused with subliminal melodies atop Momin’s polyrhythmic pulses and snappy fills.  On many of these pieces the trio gels within a collaborative approach to cadence and spiraling passages.  Hwang and bassist Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz often harmonize and contrast each other’s mini-motifs as the latter, also uses an Oud on certain tracks.  Regardless, the musicians controlled levels of intensity are framed upon linear themes along with Momin’s massive press rolls and multicolored accents.  Blazing solos abound to coincide with an abundance of numbingly hypnotic movements on an outing that presents a knockout wallop from beginning to end. 

Record Label Website: http://www.cleanfeed-records.com

Reviewed by: Glenn Astarita

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