Thursday, February 13, 2014

Pixel, We Are All Small Pixels

On a morning of another blizzard outside and my computer giving me the fits with a severe need to defrag I play Pixel's album We Are All Small Pixels (Cuneiform Rune 372) (LP or CD) and I get stupidly happy. Good music does that. To hell with the blizzard.

So why is this good? They are from Oslo. But that's not why. They are a band that makes the phrase jazz-rock respectable because the songs singer and double bassist Ellen Andrea Wang writes for the band are really fetching and they rock. Drummer Jon Audun Baar, trumpeter Jonas Kilmork Vemøy and saxophonist Harald Lassen give substance to the music and make what could be what is.

It's in a way as radical as Morphine (with that bari doing rock) in that they work with what they have and make something different. Ellen sounds great as vocalist and her bass makes you dig in. But the arrangements, the heat of an excellent drummer and those hip horns put this in gear.

This may be only their second album--but hey they sound really seasoned and hot as hell when they go to it. The songs are really something and Ellen delivers them! OK, get this one too. But only if you want. It's put a smile on my face all week. I don't smile all the time, either.

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