Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
As a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet, Oliver Lake has quite an avant-jazz pedigree. But he's also got a fiercely funky side to him, and it's that portion of his soul that enlivens Kinda' Up. To be sure, Lake's second Up incarnation (the first, Oliver Lake and Jump Up dates to 1981) is oddly funky. He's got the irreproachable Pheeroan AkLaff on drums, Reginald Washington on electric bass, and Lyndon Achee on steel drums. The funk is on, especially from Washington's popping corner, and so, too, is the strange shadowing that the steel drums enact around Lake's tones. When he's scaling the fence, with fast leaps and chilled midrange alto seasoning coming in equal measures, the splashy steel drum makes for great resonance. It also peaks and dips with Lake as he soars and swoops, with the AkLaff and Washington team pulling the rhythms this way and that and, as they say, kickin' it. There's poignancy ("Goodbye Porkpie Hat") and outright soul ("Brooke Rap") and in between a catalog of shifts that keeps you listening closely. --Andrew Bartlett
Kinda' Up,Oliver Lake Steel Quartet,Justin Time Records,Jazz,Jazz Music,Pop
Jazz Music:
Jazz Music
Ernst Von Dohnanyi Piano Works, Vol.2
Lee Konitz with Warne Marsh [Limited Edition] [Import]
Music: Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor";