Customer Reviews

The Sweetness of the Water

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John Coxon and Ashley Wales gradual nine year transformation from electronic duo to electro-acoustic improvisational unit finds it's apotheosis in this album. Featuring legendary guest trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and saxophonist Evan Parker, Spring Heel Jack have created a sound environment both subtly dissonant yet achingly beautiful.

While the guest improvisors are old school free jazzers, the leaders of this session come from a background more firmly rooted in contemporary pop music. The resulting combination yields an album rich in horn-based interplay, with a melodic and structural foundation that is as richly textural as it is nostalgically bittersweet. There is a sense of buried musical traditions in the organ chords, samples and feedback that add a level of emotional depth rarely heard in modern improvisational meetings like this. A summit meeting for the times, perhaps their most mature and impressive album to date.

This is a great album (if you like this sort of thing); it is "In a Silent Way" meets "Yellow Shark"; track 3, "Lata", is about one-half of one degree from being noise, and yet it sings so fine . . .