Clonmell Jazz Social Records: CJ5005CD
Jonathan Chung: tenor saxophone, effects; James Kitchman: electric guitar, effects; Corrie Dick: drums
Recorded November 2022 by David Lynch at Echo Zoo studios
The combination of instruments in this trio immediately alerts you to two facts: they are going to rock, and they are all responsible for both driving the rhythm and for washing their sounds in electronic effects. What is doesn’t, perhaps, tell you is how exhilarating they can sound.
The opener, ‘A new thing’, suggests the shape of the album: straight-ahead rock drum-beats, layered, driving saxophone, and guitar that bursts in fireworks across the music. Towards the end of the piece, the trio slow-down and subvert this suggestion. A similar, bombastic approach is taken on the closing track ‘I go to bed at 10pm.
Between these poles, there is a sense that the trio are continually seeking to wrong-foot the listener, laying musical traps as to what to expect and continually side-stepping these. So, while the title of track 5, ‘Grunge’, might hint at a musical direction, it is very much a tongue-in-cheek naming of a piece that is not so much Seattle as Rio de Janeiro in its dishevelled and distorted bosa nova.
At times, like on ‘Major Hit’ the repeated minor key chord guitar sequence, saxophone line that hints at a languid torch song, and drumming that sounds sarcastic, feels as if there is a humour in the music-making that tickles the band but eludes the listener. But, for much of the album, there is delight to be found in the ability of the trio to hit as hard as the combination of instruments might imply, and their quest for shifting genres and mixing things up.
Perhaps the clearest example of this is ‘Take out the sun’, track 4, which has a liltingly soft saxophone line over guitar lines through layers and layers of effects and drumming that switches so cleverly between various tones that it feels as if it is leading rather than accompanying the music. The use of effects on guitar and saxophone and the role of the drums is further explored in ‘Music Stands’, track 6.
