Dave Douglas’s High Risk - Dark Territory album review: new directions

There have been various jazz-meets-electronica projects over the years, in which jazz musicians meander over synth washes and programmed beats until all hope is lost.

But what trumpeter Dave Douglas and his High Risk quartet are doing is what jazz musicians do best: taking the sounds and influences around them, personalising them, adapting them and moulding them into an expressive language.

Electronic artist Shigeto and bassist Jonathan Maron colour the soundscape, and Douglas's discursive, Miles-ian playing makes sense of it all, but it is Mark Guiliana – fast-becoming the most influential drummer of the new jazz generation following his starring role on David Bowie's Blackstar – who is raising this still-emerging form to a new, more organic level.

[ greenleafmusic.com ]