Husky

Skerik | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 27, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: HYENA Records
• ASIN: B000FPYNVC
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #238,731 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. The Third Rail

2. Go To Hell Mr. Bush

3. Syncopate The Taint

4. Fry His Ass

5. Don’t Wanna

6. Song For Bad

7. Taiming The Shrew

8. Irritaint

9. Summer Pudding

10. Daddy Won’t Taint Bye Bye

Editorial Reviews

Billboard

"...one of this year's best jazz CDs that shines from start to finish"

Product Description

Skerik's Syncopated Taint Septet’s first ever studio album Husky on HYENA Records is vital and alive, bursting with fresh vision in arrangement, composition, improvisation, rhythm and recording. It's an album with seemingly multiple layers that are revealed slowly and surely with repeated listens. Its rhythmic vocabularies often draw from hip-hop and funk, which is part and parcel of SST7's vernacular, as equally called upon as the harmonic languages of Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Count Basie and John Coltrane. With a five-front horn line, SST7 create a gigantic sound. And yet they don't shy away from nimble, dancing harmonies that can be as refined and delicate one moment as they are muscular and bruising the next.

Husky's opening cut, "The Third Rail," emerges like a locomotive in the distance, faint horns growing ever louder as it rumbles forward. Rather unexpectedly, however, it turns elegant, managing to tread the line between lithe swing and grinding, gutbucket thump. The politically charged, "Go To Hell Mr. Bush," is a window into the band's psyche because the music seemingly declares that creativity in the face of conservatism is the best anecdote. "Syncopate The Taint" explodes in twisted fragments of brass. "Fry His Ass" has a rock steady groove that slowly and hypnotically uncoils. Skerik's tenor saxophone floats along mysteriously. Hip-hop influences like J. Dilla and Questlove can be heard here, while a Wurlitzer winds in and out with subtle shadings. "Irritaint" is a showstopper with New Orleans' brass band funk in its DNA. It doesn't take much imagination to envision Big Easy revelers dancing all night to this one. By the time "Summer Pudding" hits, SST7 are blowing the roof off. With its booming melody, big energy and insistent rhythm perhaps there's a new anthem waiting in the wings for summer 2006.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Future Jazz, January 21, 2008

By 

Robert Wingfield (New Orleans) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Husky (Audio CD)

Here it is!!.. The first coherent statement of future jazz! I am an old fart - a fan of Mingus, Miles and Kirk - and this intrigues and excites me! I just saw Skerik in a trio setting in New Orleans a few days ago and it was brilliant! This album is even better. Do Monk and Kirk make you chuckle? If so, tou will Love this.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars some of the most exciting new jazz out there, September 10, 2006

By 

Kenneth N. Fricklas (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Husky (Audio CD)

A band that could only come out of the Seattle scene, SSTS (not to be confused with STS9) has some of the most unique instrumentation out there as well as the most diverse sound. This album ranges from MMW-ish jazz jams with wurlitzer to the inspiringly named "Go to Hell, Mr. Bush", tunes that somehow mix dixie, jazz, funk, trombones impersonating a diesel horn, Debussy-flute-riffs, into some of the most complex, entertaining, and definitely not boring music out there.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is jazz..., November 17, 2010

By 

Walter Lesus "chicagocritic" (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Husky (Audio CD)

This is not "future jazz", this is where jazz has taken us to date. Maybe the phrase "ahead of it's time" also comes to mind, but it is here, and it is now. Where all the greats took us, thru the Miles years, Weather Report, etc., throw in a hint of some rock and roll, and here it is. It's a language that encompasses countries and societies, and tastes, and backrounds and all ages and genders.
Listen and forget your differences.
This is one hell of a cd. Compositions, arrangements, musicians, all are unbelievable. You have to hear this for yourself, nothing in writing can describe how fresh and creative it is.
If you don't enjoy it now, put it away and bring it back out for a listen every few months or so. Maybe it is "future" after all, at least for some.