I was worrying that this album wasn’t playing in the right order because of the fact that all the titles are numerical but non sequential. (These are the sort of things I worry about.)
This minimalist experimental jazz album revolves around saxophone and guitar for the most part and is more at the post-rock end of jazz than the jazz end. (These are the sort of sentences I write.)
I don’t know, even after my obligatory triumvirate of listens, whether I actually like it. It’s well played and well recorded, but they work with such a spartan palette that it is difficult to keep paying attention. It’s a little more like a series of musical exercises than an album, and this is a suspicion heightened by the feeling that there is some sort of cryptic theme to the album, one which I have not yet worked out. Maybe that’s why I struggle to warm to it …because it’s like a private joke that I don’t understand or a private club that I’m not allowed to join. There is enough on display to make you interested but not enough to make you bond with the music and I can’t shake the feeling that with a few adjustments (the addition of a few elements here and there to bind the whole thing together) this would be a much more enticing listen. Still…it does have the added allure of being a free download so make your own mind up.
Kim Monaghan
