Latest releases reviewed
ESBJORN SVENSSON TRIO Viaticum ACT ****
Their many fans will know what to expect from this. EST - Svensson (piano), Dan Berglund (bass) and Magnus Oström (drums) - didn't get where they are today by disappointing. Their reliance on jointly created originals reinforces the formula: melodic themes, usually over a rhythmic vamp provided by one or other(s) of the trio, judiciously sparing if somewhat idiosyncratic use of electronic bells and whistles, so to speak, and simple lines. It's attractive music, beautifully played, epitomised by the Bach-like title track, but only rarely (as on A Picture of Doris Travelling with Boris) is serenity disturbed by the coiled-spring intensity of a real sense of discovery. It's interchangeable with any of their later albums. Maybe it's time to break the mould. www.propermusic.com
Ray Comiskey
JASON MORAN Same Mother Blue Note ****
Pianist Moran's Bandwagon, with Tarus Mateen (bass) and Nasheet Waits (drums), is joined by guitarist Marvin Sewell for this dissertation on the blues form and - much more loosely, since it's applied to the likes of Prokofief's Field of the Dead - blues feeling. Mixing the thunderous and the delicate, Moran takes echoes of Jaki Byard, Mon and (maybe) Cecil Taylor, along with a primitive like boogie-woogie player Jimmy Yancey, and subsumes them into a style all his own. It's challenging music, from an aesthetic vastly different from contemporary European jazz, performed by a trio that handles form, time and changes with freedom; it says much for Sewell that he can keep his head above water in these boiling and, at times, relentless exchanges.
Ray Comiskey
PARADIGM SHIFTParadigm Shift Nagel Heyer ***
Paradigm Shift are Melvin Henderson (guitar), Gerry Youngman (Hammond) and Ted Poor (drums), and it was canny of them to call on guests Marcus Printup (trumpet), Wycliffe Gordon (trombone) and Joe Locke (vibes) for their label debut. On their own they make a typically good organ trio; with their guests in sparkling form the game is raised and they groove infectiously on material as diverse as Clifford Brown's Sandu, an uptempo Yesterdays and, particularly, Stevie Wonder's Big Brother. A saxophonist is added to no great purpose on a couple of tracks, but the overall feelgood mood engendered by the others persists. www.musicconnection.org.uk
Ray Comiskey
