Year: 2007
Record Label: Clean Feed
Style: Free Jazz / Avante Garde
Review: This is a high-impact free-form progressive jazz extravaganza brought to us by three hard-hitting heavyweights of the genre. No doubt, this trio comes at you from all angles, to include avant world-music tinged passages to asymmetrical swing vamps, often accelerated by drummer Nasheet Wait’s pulsating ride cymbal strokes. Tenor/soprano saxophonist Tony Malaby pronounces moments of angst and terror while bass great William Parker punches out the sinewy discourses via fluid lines and gruff, arco passages.
It’s a mighty force of three that lays it all out within various rhythmic matrixes. With jangling drums, pounding accents and a great deal of counterpoint, the band also delves into nip and tuck style motifs. They instill a sense of perpetual movement throughout. And it’s the largely, budding frameworks that often serve as the foundation for Malaby’s spiraling sax lines. For example, on “Floating Head,” the rhythm section executes a cascading Latin vamp, while subsequently slamming matters into overdrive. In effect, sparks are flying everywhere.
The band tones it down and alternates the flow in numerous segments, but the preponderance of this set is designed with fortitude and power. To that end, the musicians integrate numerous emotive aspects that shine glisteningly through the art of intuitively generated improvisation. They’re at the top of their game here.
Record Label Website: http://www.cleanfeed-records.com
Reviewed by:
Glenn Astarita
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