Brad Myers, Prime Numbers

Modern mainstream jazz has so many sub-styles attached to it as to almost be meaningless as a category. I won't rehearse all the possibilities here, except to say that a swinging pulse and the presence of chord changes are a common factor for the most part. But that covers a great many approaches. Today's album is mainstream in that sense, yet it has postbop and bop-cool aspects that set it stylistically apart from some of its brethren styles.

Guitarist Brad Myers heads the date and plays some mellow-toned electric with a sort of Jim Hall-Kenny-Burrell-and-after smarts. The vibes (Chris Barrick)-tenor (Ben Walkenhauer)-acoustic bass (Peter Gemus)-drums (Tom Buckley) lineup and playing styles put you in mind of a modern-day equivalent of some of those Atlantic sessions from the fifties where Bags was paired with some contrasting cats. Not that there is a noticeable copycat thing here. No one sounds like they are channeling directly, but there is a heated coolness to the music along with a post-then currency that makes for interesting combinations. And the compositions are beyond in their own interesting way.

Brad has a clean-toned involved playing style that his compositions complement well. "Invitation," a Shorter and a Monk tune round out the program and are given arrangements that freshen the sound. Barrick on vibes, Walkenhauer on tenor and Gemus on bass solo well and show their own personal way within the mainstream currents. Tom Buckley sounds subtle and swinging in the way that a relatively quiet, cool sound demands, and takes a nice solo or two. Michael Mavridoglou and Dominic Marino fill out the sound on trumpet and flugel (for two cuts) and trombone (one cut), respectively.

The music rings true and has enough original and updated to it that you do not feel like you have taken a trip on Sherman's "way-back" machine.

David Torn, Only Sky

David Torn's first album since 2007, Only Sky (ECM B0022966-02) reaffirms his creative stature as a major force in the high art of very electric guitar, space guitar if you will. The album creates vibrant soundscapes and orchestrally dense thickets of cosmic sound, as produced by solo electric guitar and its transformations.

There are moments of pure tone-space and with his highly musical approach to effects, especially digital delay, a blues-rock-compositional presence that skillfully glides atop the pulsating or enveloping shimmers of delay for music at once deftly creative, guitar-centric, beautifully sculpted, with essay-like logic and a strong feeling of structure-in-motion.

The sound is monumental in that special ECM sense and each piece brings us memorable music which is much more than merely mood inducing. The compositional elements bring the music a soulful but lyrical memorability and show the hand of a master who knows how to build sonic structures and make the total aural package into a unified whole. That is a matter of years experimenting with effects, which like any other sound aspect of the instrument is something for which special technique-sets and a sure artistic sense are needed for a great result. That is very much happening on the album.

The virtuoso use of spatial effect extensions give David Torn a poet's surety. To my mind, in today's cluttered world of avant guitar excursions, David and Gary Lucas reign supreme as the present-day masters of space. This album gives you a wonderful travelogue into Torn's special world, and in the process demonstrates just how good he is at it.

It is stunning. A masterpiece!

If you are Stateside and able to catch David on his tour, it starts today. Here is the itinerary: May 8 - New York, NY at Subculture, May 10 - Hamden, CT at The Ballroom at The Outer Space, May 11 - Marlboro, NY at The Falcon, May 12 - Dunellen, NJ at NJ Proghouse @ Roxy & Dukes, May 13 - Cambridge, MA at Regattabar, May 14 - Philadelphia, PA at Philadelphia Art Alliance, May 16 - Portland, OR at Holocene, May 17-18 - Seattle, WA at Storyville (Pike Place), May 19 - San Francisco, CA at Slim’s, May 20 - Sacramento, CA at Gold Lion Arts, May 21 - Los Angeles, CA at Blue Whale, May 22 - Denver, CO at Walnut Room, May 26 - Minneapolis, MN at Cedar Cultural Center, May 27 - Milwaukee, WI at The Jazz Estate, May 29 - Chicago, IL at Constellation, May 30 - Cincinnati, OH at The Monastery, May 31 - Pittsburgh, PA at Club Café, June 1 - Washington DC at Union Arts, June 3 - Baltimore, MD at The Windup Space, June 4 - Carrboro, NC at Cat’s Cradle, June 6 - Asheville, NC at Streamside Concerts, June 7 - Atlanta, GA at Red Light Café

Velkro, Don't Wait for the Revolution

Three talented players with diverse European backgrounds unite as the trio Velkro and the album Don't Wait for the Revolution (Clean Feed 313). The music is an original mix of avant propulsed jazz with some rock heft.

Bostian Simon is on tenor sax. He has inventive imagination that carries him forward throughout the set and never gets tiring. Stephan Meidell plays electric guitar, bass guitar, and peppers the mix with electronics. Luis Candeias gives us some very nicely horizontal time on drums, then comes back with nicely timeless vertical variations.

It's a trio that does not sound quite like any other. There are very electric moments along with a DIY creativity that gives us outside thrusts that are not typical, nor are they predictable.

Seven originals grace the album, with strong anchoring guitar and bass riffs at times, melodic originality and moments that break the pulse and go into various creative zones. Stephan's bass and guitar often serve as the fulcrum points in the music, giving structure to the fertile embellishments we hear nicely in Simon's soloing and Candeias's free variations. But then Stephan can invent some free lines worth hearing, too. And his electronics strongly color the end result.

In the end we get music that occupies a space of its own, not quite free avant jazz, not quite rock-jazz, not quite anything in a predictable way.

It is enjoyable, adventuresome fare from three players who do not follow any typical path but strike out on their own into interesting territory that straddles a number of styles and sounds completely contemporary. A very good listen!

Extremely Serious Business, Headwall

ESP Disk has never been known for fusion and contemporary mainstream jazz, yet that is what they offer us with the group Extremely Serious Business and their album Headwall (ESP 5005). It is the vehicle for the strong electric guitar styling of John D. Thomas, who also writes the original numbers, five in all with two standards reworked as refreshing breaks from the routine.

Thomas plays an electric guitar and also a guitar played through a guitar synthesizer. I generally prefer his sound on the untransformed instrument, but the switch gives us two different voices so we get a variety of worlds there. He is a craftsman of the contemporary rapid-fire line, which he gives us nicely with good ideas and a sort of post-Trane expanded chromatic tonality. Occasionally the lines lag just a tad, so that one wishes the tempo might be slightly slower or another take made. This is minor compared with the total effect of his playing, which gets your ears attuned and excites with its arching dynamic.

The band is a together quartet of Greg Burke on piano, Paul Beaudry acoustic bass, and Tom Garner, drums, good players all. Silver's "Song for My Father" features John on guitar, keys and electric bass with Garner on drums and it works well. There is as a concluding work a guitar duet with Avi Rothbard on "Yesterdays," and that comes out nicely, too.

The band, the originals and Thomas's artistry make for good listening. The fusion is rooted in hard bop and after more than it is rock oriented. And that is fine because there is sincerity, talent, commitment and some twists and turns that bring it all home.

Well done!

Isaac Darche, Team & Variations

Very good post-bop guitarists play music that does not really fall naturally on the guitar fretboard. The adept at rapid-fire lining and sophisticated chord sequencing has to conquer the inertia inherent in a guitar. A piano lays out all the note possibilities horizontally. "All you have to do" is realize them. A guitar gives you all possibilities as well, but it doesn't lay them out so much as you have to discover them with two different hand functions. I partly jest. To play any instrument well is a challenge. But to me the guitar (or for that matter the contrabass, violin, and/or other stringed instruments) has note possibilities that are mostly not intuitively given to you. We all have seen the amusing videos of cats or dogs "playing" the piano in some fashion. I know of no videos showing pets playing the guitar in any fashion. Well all that means is that there are pre-conditions for getting the guitar to sound that are less obvious than on the piano. This is of course a gross simplification. To do things well on either instrument is equally difficult. They take a lifetime in many ways.

So today we have Isaac Darche, a post-bop guitar player of great skill, technique, finesse, imagination. He puts together an excellent quintet and gives us much fine music on his album Team & Variation (Challenge 73395).

What makes this album so intriguing? The five Darche compositions are exemplary models with complex lines and interesting changes. The three standards are well handled as well. The band members all have the ability to make excellent music in the post-bop vein. Isaac Darche is the consummate weaver of line-twisting spells, a master of balance and velocity, an inventive, inspired technician who has much soul and feeling and a sense of form he brings to the solo situation quite well. He has found very compatible counterparts in the front line in Chad Lefkowitz-Brown on tenor and Glenn Zaleski on piano, the latter who comps with flair, a kind of post-Hancockian sophistication. The bass-drums team of Desmond White and E. J. Strickland are superior as well. They swing mightily and internalize the compositional forms and give back creatively. Everybody does that really, but the rhythm sets the pace and makes it all pop.

Darche is one of those players who brings his considerable "A" game to every song, giving us some variations that always seem inspired. But there is much good soloing all around.

This is a disk I would go so far to say is stunningly good. Darche is a monster and he surrounds himself with just the right kind of companions to get his vision soaring. Excellent!

HeKz, Caerus

Today another firmly in the rock zone, metallic and prog-oriented. Here are HeKz, a talented quintet who fashion committed lyrics woven around songwriting of a memorable nature and laced with intricate instrumental routines that keep your ears busy in good ways. The album at hand is Caerus (bmhaudio 001), nine ambitious numbers featuring the out-front bass guitar and vocals of Matt Young, handy and idiomatic guitar work from Alastair Beveridge and Tom Smith, the keys of James Messenger and the drums of Kirk Brandham. They meld together as a unified well-drilled rock machine, not especially sounding like anybody as much as embodying metal-prog as state-of-the-art contemporaneity.

The vocals have that boisterous musicality that are what you might expect from such a group. Guitar solos show the hammering-on rapidity so much a part of the technical bag of accomplished players these days, but do not over rely upon speed.

The full impact of the band in their fully arranged music is what stands out as a whole in the end. HeKz will satisfy your need for something heavy and well put-together. A winner for those who enjoy the genre!

Lunden Reign, American Stranger

To say that you like or love something "in spite of yourself" is mostly to say that whoever you are doesn't necessarily fit with the attraction to something. In the case of the band project Lunden Reign and their album American Stranger (self released) I can't say that I find it good in spite of myself. I have always appreciated a good rock album and this one qualifies. That it has the presence of a real band with a real lead guitarist (Lora G) and a vocalist who projects forward very well without the slightest need for digital pitch-correction (Nikki Lunden), that it has a real bass player, a real drummer and they do songs that may have a possibility of airplay but hold their own as songs well-written (Nikki and Lora along with producer Luis Maldonado), well then it isn't really in spite of myself, is it?

The feel of the music is not as backward looking as it is contemporary, and I suppose for us older folks that takes a little to get used to. It doesn't have that contemporary vapidity that the worst of pop today seems to have sunk into. But that becomes ever more clear as you listen a few times.

It's a band and an album that ultimately appeals to me because it shows you that rock can live on and thrive when things are right. Lunden Reign makes things right!

So if you want to get a sense what is happening today rock-wise, here is one place to find out.