New York-based jazz trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas has recorded more than 40 albums as a bandleader since 1993, but he’s known best to many listeners for his ongoing role as a mainstay member of John Zorn’s Masada collective. The seeds for this album ‘High Risk’, which introduces Douglas’ new quartet of the same name, were sown last year at a Red Bull Music Academy session in Manhattan where Douglas and electronic producer Shigeto first met and collaborated on a live improvised performance. The seven tracks gathered here see Douglas and Shigeto working with Groove Collective bassist Jonathon Maron and Mark Giuliana on electric and acoustic drums, to create an impressive collection that navigates deftly between electronic music and jazz, without ever planting a foot firmly in either sphere.
It’s this fluid and unpredictable nature that lends tracks such as opener ‘Molten Sunset’ such an immersive sense of atmosphere. Douglas’ trumpet solos ring out with clarity across a lazy wash of ambient electronic textures and sparse clattering drums that gradually builds into a rush of fluid jazz polyrhythms and twinkling synthetic tones, the bass runs and Douglas’ soloing growing in intensity before the entire track drops a gear down into a loping drum groove that’s straight hip hop. ‘Etiquette’ meanwhile sees limber bass runs and shuffling off-beats adding a sense of funk while Shigeto’s subtly deployed samples and turntable elements dart back and forth as Douglas’ increasingly ornate trumpet runs unfurl, before ‘Tied Together’ wanders out into widescreen cinematic ambience as the murmuring electronic layers build into a rich psychedelic wash of rippling, dreamlike textures. On the whole there’s more of a focus on slowburning atmosphere here rather than jazz pyrokinetics, resulting in a frequently soothing collection that envelopes the listener in layers of warm sound, whilst feeling like a cohesive journey from start to finish.
