Well you can’t complain about false advertising from this Ottawa sextet. We’re trading in spiritual ecstatic jazz here, minus the intense wig outs that John Coltrane or Albert Ayler were prone to. Yet there’s also a strong Afro element, and not just in terms of percussion. Firstly the increasingly ubiquitous Afrobeat element is present, such as on the gorgeous Agbara, with it’s pumping basslines and stabbing horns, yet there’s also vague moments of muscled up Ethio jazz (Negus Negast). It’s their third album, first for Strut, and also their first all acoustic outing. And on Rising Sun they’ve mined some of the most incredible elements you could ever hope to hear and crafted them together in their own unique, quite chilled out way. It’s truly an amazing combination. Wholly instrumental it maintains quite a funky jazzy feel throughout, reminiscent of everyone from the cinematic musings of Lalo Schiffrin or perhaps more strikingly some of the more sedate work of Alice Coltrane. However they sound like both yet neither, somehow forging their own identity from between all of these super cool influences. In fact blindfolded you’d pick them as an obscure forgotten relic from the golden age of the 60′s and early 70′s of rare groove, which of course aint a bad thing at all.
Bob Baker Fish
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