Review: Sons Of Kemet - Burn

‘Sons Of Kemet’ is the new group starring two of the UK’s biggest and best names in jazz – namely the greatest drummer of his generation Sebastian Roachford, and saxophone and clarinet master Shabaka Hutchings. Here however they are joined by not the most usual choice of instrumentation. Despite being known as a drummer of great rhythmic feel and invention, and also one of great profile, Roachford here aligns himself with second drummer Tom Skinner. And rather than choosing a more obvious chordal instrument (excepting two numbers where guitarist Dave Okumu drops in), the group is instead rounded out by the rarely heard tuba, courtesy of Oren Marshall.

‘Burn’, their first record, gets off to a sudden and powerful start courtesy of some pounding driving drums, that even when the horns enter, never let up. The tuba is the real revelation here though, providing a different yet driving and strong bass feel, while Hutchings’ creates a clutch of different melodies, and both lead instruments play off each other in a sublime, fiery and free manner. It’s not ‘free’ as you may fear it though - whilst it borrows elements and the power, the album is absolutely filled with hooks. The second track, 'The Godfather', is a brilliant example of this, where everything seems to build and snake itself around the lead melody line to great effect.

Fourth track ‘Book Of Disquiet’ is the first to offer something more reflective (and yes, quiet), with all the sounds of the group working to create subtle ideas, both individually and together, and crucially the two drummers are able to showcase something tasteful and notably different from most usual twin-drum line-ups. ‘Going Home’, that follows, offers a more fun approach and Hutchings at his most lyrical - all the while weaving around Marshall’s tuba that offers a steady and insistent pulse for the listener to hang onto.

Although ‘Burn’ is their debut recording, Sons Of Kemet have been around and playing the live circuit for more than two years, gathering rave reviews wherever they’ve played. Given the electric sense of fun and energy they create on record, it would truly be something to behold to see them live, but for once here the studio doesn’t neuter the experience. Boasting power, groove, melody and soul, it’s an album that manages to cram in a massive amount, all the more impressive given its more experimental line-up, but this is no exercise in experimentation – this is wall-to-wall music of the highest order and certainly one of the best British groups currently on the scene.

****

Review: Jan Garbarek - Visible World

Following on from his excellent ‘Twelve Moons’ album, Jan Garbarek returns with the unique elemental sounding melancholia of which he seemingly has become both the master and sole student. Creating something perhaps slightly less austere than this earlier works, this is in fact due to a good deal of the music here being based on work for various previous soundtracks. As such it isn't really comparable to previous Garbarek works, as there doesn't exist a common theme or unifying thread, and that in turn creates the biggest problem with ‘Visible World’.

At times it falls somewhere between ambient and minimalism, a chilled and relaxing listening experience, heard best on the album highlight ‘Desolate Mountains’. At other times we get spirit-lifting euphoric tunes such as ‘Red Wind’ or ‘The Healing Smoke’. We also however get pieces that border dangerously close to being contemporary background and dinner party music, with ‘Survivor’ giving us at times something akin to ‘Panpipe Moods – Volume 4”.

For a recording, and recording artist, that seems focused on creating a mood – either one defined mood, or an evolving and developing set – there is quite a juxtaposition here that means you never quite settle in. It’s pleasant and at times even interesting, suitable for background music to some late evening soiree, but it never really hits a stride and gets going. There are a number of good pieces here for sure, but as good as they are, they never come together as a whole, feeling overall like a badly programmed chill compilation.

Occasionally Garbarek gets unfairly generalised as ‘new age’, as much a result of his more ethereal sounds and the lack of easy classification for his music to fall into, as it is the laziness of his commentators. Here though, although a qualified success, he has stepped almost willingly into the genre - albeit while keeping some of the euro-jazz spirit he is known for. For fans, there’s good music here, but with its soft nature and overall lack of cohesion it’s one of Garbareks less important and more unessential items.

**

Review: Herbie Hancock - Headhunters

Herbie Hancock had, before he’d even hit twenty years old, been a talent to watch. In his early twenties he laid down some classic recordings for Blue Note with some of the best players around, played with the great Donald Byrd, and been drafted into Miles Davis’ band to help form the second great quintet. Helping Miles on his seminal electric fusion jazz album ‘In A Silent Way’, Miles would then go onto develop his own darker heavier funk sound through recordings such as ‘Bitches Brew’, ‘Jack Johnson’ and ‘On The Corner’, as well as increasingly funkier sounding live performances.

Hancock though would spend a few years dabbling with funking-up his acoustic music and band, before making a move into the fully-fledged electric funk that Miles had embraced. Joining the same label as Miles, ‘Sextant’ released on Columbia in 1973 found him testing the waters with the electronic sounds of the gradually emerging jazz-fusion movement, but it was ‘Head Hunters’ released later in the same year that launched him head-first into jazz-funk stardom.

The stunning sixteen-minute opener ‘Chameleon’, unlike anything else at the time runs a funkified musical labyrinth of a rich tapestry of sounds and electronic manipulations. Electric bassist Paul Jackson lays down a steady, yet cool groove with Harvey Mason on drums, while Bernie Maupin on saxophone follows Hancocks leading melodies with an effortless ease. Full of great segments, the whole works to great effect, and has been sampled countless times, but nothing compares to the fantastic original.

An earlier tune from the decade before, ‘Watermelon Man’ from 1962’s debut ‘Takin’ Off’ is given a complete redux, as Hancock and his team strip it down to a tropical sounding funk, with Maupins flute shimmering against a great rhythm backdrop. Hancock’s keyboards lead the melody gently as he gives breathing room to his players for some free improvisation. Taken from it’s beginnings as a relatively conventional acoustic group number, it is reset into a tribal-electro-jam, and it sounds magnificent.

‘Sly’ is the peak of improvisational free-for-all funk, with a frantic yet carefully laid out style as everyone gets to show off their musical muscle. Bill Summers infectious percussion rhythms, here with congas, comes into its own as the pace increases. Combined with Harvey Mason’s drums, they create a solid and highly grooved percussive wall that only adds to an already top-flight composition.

By contrast to the first three numbers, the last piece, ‘Vein Melter’ finds everyone at a more relaxed pace. The keyboards and sax, light and gentle, mix with swaggering funk of Jackson’s bass, while Mason and Summers again get to show their musical prowess in the equally subtle yet captivating rhythmic wave they create.

‘Head Hunters’ was a massive success on its release, selling over a million copies and beginning Hancocks straddling of the jazz and pop worlds. Creating a new funk style, it would go on to influence other music outside of jazz and in no small way help change the way people listened to music overall. Also helping open the doors for electronic music such as electro, hip-hop and other sample-based music, its influence can be felt in almost all music genres. Hancock took a different funk route to the funk bands of the time, and a different one to that of the other jazzers’ gone funk, like Donald Byrd funk-pop, and Miles’ jungle-funk, and in doing so became a different pioneer. Time has not diminished this most influential of recordings, and it still to this day remains a highly addictive listening experience. Dig out your copy now.

*****

Review: Grant Green - Easy

To say this is not Grant Green at his best would be a polite understatement. To say ‘Easy’ is perhaps a comment on Greens attitude to making this record would be nothing but entirely correct.

After a line of funkified jazz albums that had met with varying successes, Green again left Blue Note, his home for the most and best part of his career, and recorded for a number of different labels. Obviously aiming at a more commercial market the output was frequently less than stellar, and more often than not completely dire. This manages to fall into the latter camp. Hell, it practically owns it.

The seventies were often awash with jazz stars capitalising on the success and popularity of soul, rock and R&B, and Green himself had done very well mining this field with his ‘Caryin’ On’, ‘Visions’ and ‘Green Is Beautiful’ albums, not to mention a string of live albums. Here though Green is clearly not in charge, and the effect is obvious.

A huge band is the first problem, with Grant Green often at his best when working in small tight groups with every player able to crucially make their mark. Here instead we have a cast of thousands creating a distinctly unfunky funk gloop, with Green himself almost all but buried in the mix.

That’s not to say there aren’t great solos here. There are. And lots of them. You just won’t hear them unless you find some way of remixing the album yourself, such is the sheer number of instruments competing in their way. If you listen closely you can hear Green still close to his peak, playing with the technique and soul that you would expect. Why someone felt the need to suddenly add strings on top of him afterwards is a mystery only compounded further by the insult. Why bother having a star if he’s the one person you can’t hear?

‘Easy’ then is for the completist only. But even they’d be better off just ignoring it’s existence and accepting that Grant Green pretty much started and ended on Blue Note, with just a few small exceptioins. Remember him that way, not this.

**

Review: Hiromi - Brain

Japanese pianist Hiromi exploded into the music world with her debut ‘Another Mind’. Displaying almost over-whelming technique and power at the keys, both she and her album grabbed your attention, took you on a rollercoaster and left you breathless and slightly dazed.

Album number 2, ‘Brain’, then does not grab you in the same way – it couldn’t - but still showcases an incredible and still very young artist who has plenty to say. Opening with the surprisingly electronics-heavy ‘Kung-Fu World Champion’, Hiromi displays a mastery of analog keyboards and squiggly sounding synths, with Tony Greys bass also perfectly melding into the mix. A few minutes in, Hiromi switches to building the pace with the acoustic piano, and the vibe generated is first rate. The next two tracks in comparison are entirely acoustic piano-trio pieces, with ‘If’ a perfect example of trio interplay, the bass and drums more to the fore than previously seen, and with ‘Wind Song’ displaying a dreamy waltz-like quality.

Throughout the album the piano does dominate, and rightly so - in Hiromi’s hands, the instrument is masterful and comes alive. However the keyboards that Hiromi also enjoys are more prominent than on her earlier recording. The title track for the most part, for example, sounds like a winning theme from an Oscar-nominated underdog epic, but is book-ended by some swirling keyboard effects that tend to jar and stand out. The penultimate ‘Keytalk’ too moves from an all-out jam with wonky sounding keyboards, before settling into first a more jazzy, then African sounding, dance groove. Sliding into a more European dance feel, the electronic sounds don’t truly gel with the rest of the music around it, and sounds much more ‘assembled’ than the more organic live interplay going on.

Much more successful are the acoustic piano pieces; ‘Desert Moon’ with its galloping pace but lightness of touch gives it a feel of a more sprightly Bill Evans, but perhaps as backed by Buddy Rich, whilst ‘Green Tea Farm’ with its moving slow and plaintive quality has more than a hint of prime era Keith Jarrett.

Best of all though is the ending ‘Legend Of The Purple Valley’. Epic in sound, it switches between jazz and film score music. Sounding like Hiromi is going for her very own concerto, it makes a truly great finale to the album.

After the success of her debut ‘Another Mind’, ‘Brain’ offers a follow-up that takes some new directions. Each of the pieces manages to be varied and interesting, while still holding as a complete album. Very occasionally the electronic sounds don’t gel with the acoustic. Make no mistake though; this is not a fusion record. Hiromi basically is making an album of music that she wants to make – some jazz, some some classical, a hint of rock, acoustic here, electronic there. Some listeners then won’t like what they hear, but everyone will find something here that will hook them. All of the pieces are bursting with incredible ideas, and for anyone willing to listen without prejudice to the electric elements, will find an awesome and satisfying musical journey.

****

Review: Grover Washington Jnr - Winelight

‘Winelight’ is one of Grover Washington Jnr’s best-known and highest selling records, producing his smash hit ‘Just The Two Of Us’ with Bill Withers, and nominated for four Grammys, winning two – one each for the song and the album. Washington since has gone down in the history books largely as being the creator, or godfather, of the later ‘smooth jazz’ genre, and being a romance-and-wine music specialist. It’s an unfair tag and, though to a certain degree true, it belies both his extraordinary talent and his music.

His first album of the 80’s is both a classic and the absolute pinnacle of the genre, as well as transcending it, and it still sounds fresh even today. The one vocal piece is the obvious and notable standout, and as good as it is, the instrumentals are all great and in fact even better, with his skill and his heart on tenor, alto and his trademark ‘pure-toned’ soprano all really coming through.

The leading title cut is sublime and catchy, but ‘In The Name Of Love’ is the winning highlight, with a beautiful melancholy all of its own. Yes, it’ll appeal to the romantics, but it’s much more than that, with just like everything else here, coming tooled with a winning melody but also with a bite and solid foundation usually missing from most music in this area. Other ‘soft players’ like Kenny G and Richard Elliot would later bring down this style in a mire of predictable gossamer-light floating melodies backed by dated keyboards and lifeless electronic drums, but here Washington is creating something new and beautiful, just maybe pointing to something else even bigger and better around the corner.

‘Just The Two Of Us’ with Bill Withers of course is still a great song, and if tired out then only by familiarity. And Washington’s incredible solo is inspired, as indeed they always had been. In fact there isn’t a weak track at all on this classic album. Granted, this isn’t the grittier funk of Washingtons earlier ‘70’s albums, and as the cover shows, it’s clearly aimed with one firmly arched-eyebrow and a teeth-clenched red rose at the candlelit valentines crowd. As such then it’s a very smooth listen, but also with some real meat to sink your teeth into. Longtime collaborator Eric Gale is a welcome presence throughout too, playing some sophisticated and restrained guitar to match up with Washingtons pristine sax work.

If there is anything expressly bad about this record, it’s the slightly dated 80’s percussion on a couple of the tracks here, that in hindsight would be better omitted from the mix entirely, that and Marcus Millers sometimes overly ‘springy’ bass. As good a player as he is, and he is good, his bass tone in this decade was always incredibly plastic and processed sounding, and unfortunately the same is largely true here also. Those tiny quibbles aside, this is fine silk-like music from beginning to end, that would admittedly later regrettably lead to the creation of ‘smooth’ as we now know it. Featuring many a good solo from some inspired players and truly a great saxophone player, it really is one of Washingtons best albums.

*****

Review: Jan Garbarek - Dresden

Jan Garbarek has become a frustratingly slow recording artist of late, with his last few releases being punctuated by gaps of sometimes up to five years each. Now again some five years after his last album ‘In Praise Of Dreams’, and still touring every year, the Norweigan saxophonist releases what might arguably be his most anticipated recording ever. The first ‘Jan Garbarek Group’ work for sixteen years, having worked with much of the band, as well as newer players and the choral Hilliard Ensemble most recently, ‘Dresden’ is also surprisingly the much-admired reed mans first live album. Even better, it’s great.

Recorded in 2007, a largely new line-up plays here. Longtime under-rated piano and keyboard maestro Rainer Bruninghaus returns, but sadly usual bass sideman Eberhard Weber suffered a - thankfully not fatal - stroke shortly before this tour started. Fresh blood then comes in the form of Brazillian bassist Yuri Daniel and sometime Garbarek partner French drummer Manu Katche.

For anyone who thinks that Garbarek had become too ‘new age’ over the course of the preceeding years, here he shows just how capable he and his formidable sidemen are. A complete reinvention of violinist Shankar’s ‘Paper Nut’ opens the concert with a stunning driving and energetic drum shuffle from Katche, before Garbarek quickly enters the fray with a tense and building trademark ‘searching’ soprano sax riff. A better opener Garbarek could not have chosen.

Pieces are pulled and re-interpreted from all over the saxophonist’s bountiful discography, but with a surprisingly large chunk of material being released here for the first time. Daniel plays highly lyrical and very soulful sounding bass throughout, and Katche crucially gives everything a pulsing drive that some may have thought Garbarek previously was missing. Bruninghaus is the secret weapon here though, constantly filling in the gaps everywhere with complex and harmonic orchestral splashes and piano runs. At one point he even lays down a hot blast of a dancing salsa solo.

Three tracks are culled from his ‘Twelve Moons’, with ‘There Were Swallows’ sounding gentle and reflective, while ‘The Tall Tear Trees’ features a simply awesome crescendo. ‘Tao’ offers Daniel a showcase for his bass playing prowess, and its sublime; multi-layed rhythm and solo all laid down at one with his unique and beautiful sound. Elsewhere ‘Once I Wished A Tree Upside Down’ becomes a joyful and uplifting latin groover, but not before ‘Transformations’ gives Bruninghaus a long and skilful, yet moving solo spot to act as a tremendous segue. ‘Milagre Dos Pieces’ offers a more traditional sounding jazz, again with which Bruninghaus steals the show.

A thrilling and varied two-hour set, that offers plenty of room for all four players to shine, ends with a funky and uplifting extended take on ‘Voy Cantando’. Garbareks solo is typically economical, but sparkles with its clean tone and piercing quality. A live recording at last from a man who should by all rights have several to his name, ‘Dresden’ brings his and his groups improvisational prowess, as well as their own powerful yet elegant playing, to bear on some outstanding material. Everything here sounds better than any other previous version, and for any listeners who found Garbareks more recent works to be increasingly too ethereal and overly adhering to the so-called ‘ECM aesthetic’, here there is a real bite, edge and grit. A great live recording, ‘Dresden’ is also arguably Garbareks best album yet.

*****