Potter's discography has been getting ameliorate with each passing year, but Underground (Sunnyside, 2006) was a truthful watershed, where conception, composition together with surgical operation came together for the almost distinctive together with fully realized album of his career. Follow the Red Line is fifty-fifty better, featuring the same grouping but with guitarist Adam Rogers inwards house of Wayne Krantz, whose precipitous onslaught together with oblique lines were alongside Underground's defining points. Those exclusively familiar with Rogers' largely acoustic Criss Cross discs, including 2005's Apparitions, may last surprised to listen him boot such serious butt here, but those who've heard his mid-1990s operate with Lost Tribe know that he's undeniably capable of this variety of electrified, rock-and funk-edged music.
The gentle opening fanfare of "Train" starts the assault a lyrical together with subdued note, but it's non long earlier drummer Nate Smith kicks inwards with a visceral funk groove, bolstered past times Craig Taborn's uncannily dichotomous Fender Rhodes. Potter takes the showtime solo, edifice from dry reason null to the stratosphere together with demonstrating the variety of paradoxical blend of restraint together with reckless abandon that makes his extended solos non precisely consistently captivating, but exhilarating. The same goes for Rogers, whose solo begins inwards melodic simplicity, but rapidly takes off with a raucous unloose energy together with linear excogitation that's the primary argue why he, along with Ben Monder, are ii of New York's almost in-demand guitarists across a broad swatch of styles. His tone is dense together with sustaining, with a punchy onslaught and, similar Potter, has an mightiness to milk the simplest of vamps for all it's worth.
Taborn gets to do the same affair during the unrelenting, single-chord vamp that's at the nitty-gritty of "Arjuna," with Rogers soul-drenched single-line anchoring hand-in- glove with Smith's loose together with unyieldingly responsive groove. "Pop Tune #1" offers a brief respite; a countrified ballad where Roger's rich, sustaining chords back upward Potter's singable tune earlier taking a blues-drenched lead. Rogers builds dramatically, exclusively to of a precipitous dissolve equally Potter morphs the tune into unopen to other lengthy together with funk-laden vamp where everyone raises the temperature during his blistering together with idea-filled solo.
It's an practice inwards futility to observe a bring upward for the music of Follow the Red Line. But equally Potter blurs the lines betwixt jazz, rock, funk together with fifty-fifty a piddling afro- crunch inwards ways that are finally beingness accepted i time again ii decades later on The New York Times declared the "pestilence known equally fusion is dead," the best give-and-take to line this recording is, quite simply, great.
Chris Potter's quartet Underground should last looked upon equally i of the many facets inwards the saxophonist's prismatic persuasion of contemporary jazz. Certainly the band is oriented toward a progressive jazz picture with the electrical guitar operate of the vivid Adam Rogers together with Craig Taborn's witty together with pungent Fender Rhodes keyboard.
Assumedly the concept of Underground harks somewhat to the fusion of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, together with Chick Corea. But Potter's vision with this combo goes beyond those static together with funkier values, entering a wilder, unabashed, together with violent aggression that cannot last corralled. In alive surgical operation at the storied Village Vanguard nightclub inwards Greenwich Village, you lot await together with have long drawn-out compositions, extended solos specially from Potter, together with novel music tried out equally audience experiments.
"Train" is a long 16-minute trip, with mixed meters starting inwards 3/4 together with going to 6/8, edifice momentum together with leading to alternating beats of ix together with 7 together with Potter's extended opening salvo solo. This is intense music -- sliced, diced, marinated, together with flash-seared past times Potter. "Arjuna" (not the Yusef Lateef composition) is a spectral audio analysis, lower telephone substitution together with illuminated, with a drum solo from Nate Smith, a Rhodes solo, choppy sax, together with a workout from Potter together with Rogers. Fond of interval leaps together with overblown harmonic displacements, Potter's tenor is driven during "Viva Las Vilnius" over a quirky rhythmic thought meshed with a funky bottom destination together with Latin or ethnic inferences.
The finally ii pieces of the gear upward are decidedly settled, equally Taborn's soulful electrical pianoforte on the lean ballad "Zea" places the grouping inwards a calmer house together with Potter plays frail bass clarinet inwards an upper register atypical of its commons throaty sound. The finale, "Togo," is a version of the keen melodic composition drummer Ed Blackwell brought to the repertoire of Old together with New Dreams. It's real good rendered, with Potter sticking to bass clarinet, understating the tune with reverence together with observe earlier Taborn goes crazy, stepping upward the vibe into a funky fashion piece Potter switches to tenor together with plays the calmer finally chorus.
For Potter's fans, this is a worthwhile improver to his growing discography. Considering Potter equally a novel music composer, this indicates how his music is changing together with nevertheless flowering, together with inwards a developmental stage. Evidently Potter together with the audience were real pleased with the results, together with perchance a 2d book of these sessions is inwards the can.
Track Listing:
1. Train
2. Arjune
3. Pop Tune #1
4. Viva Las Vilnius
5. Sea
6. Togo
Personnel:
Chris Potter: tenor saxophone, bass clarinet;
Adam Rogers: guitar;
Craig Taborn: Fender Rhodes;
Nate Smith: drums.
EmoticonEmoticon