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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating to listen to jazz transforming itself, September 23, 2003
Dave Douglas, Guillermo Brown, Kurt Rosenwinkel, The Bad Plus, Pharoah Sanders/Graham Haynes, Roy Hargrove, John Scofield, Garage a Trois, Brad Meldhau, Christian McBride--these are just a few of the artists trying to move the music beyond its post-bop/free-bop doldrums. Their strategy may not be new--the incorporation of seemingly alien elements (hip-hop, trance, jam-band, electronica) into a firmly established esthetic--but the sounds they're coming up with sure are.With his new release, Sonic Trance, Nicholas Payton has gone as far as anyone in the direction of a genuinely new approach. Interestingly, Payton appears to be in it for the long haul: This disc is a kind of documentation of what's happening with him and his working band (Payton, trumpet, flugelhorn, effects; Tim Warfield, tenor and soprano sax; Kevin Hays, keyboards; Vicente Archer, bass; Adonis Rose, drums; Daniel Sadownick, percussion; Karriem Riggins, sampler). An interesting mix of players, to be sure. For example, Karriem Riggins, himself a young drummer of note, in this band is relegated to sampled sounds; Kevin Hays, who started out as just another young-lion post-bop pianist, is heard almost exclusively on electric keyboards; Daniel Sadownick, a percussionist of note, provides a much richer percussive underpinning than I've ever heard from him before. What does it sound like? A heady stew of tradition and wild experimentation. Take "Blu Hays," the closest thing to a straight jazz number. It cooks along with a traditional acoustic walking bass, but Hays tweaks his piano with weird effects, Sadownick lays down a killer percussion base, and Payton solos with wild abandon. Other numbers, such as "Stinkie Twinkie (remix)," venture much farther into musical hinterlands, with equally startling effect. In a single tune, you're likely to hear funky, fuzzed-out keyboards, whistles, bird calls, unidentifiable percussion effects, sax drones, blats, prepared acoustic piano, and wah-wah trumpet. But somehow, it all becomes integrated into a marvelously rich soundscape that never palls, never seems contrived, no matter how alien and even mannered some of it sounds. My favorite cut is "Two Mariachis on the Wall" (or it could be "Two Mexicans on the Wall": the first appears on my media player screen as the title; the second as the title on the disc sleeve--maybe it has two titles, I don't know). There's some real bizarreness happening here: It starts out with a drunken calliope-like quote from "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" then morphs into some faux "Sketches of Spain" lunacy, with everyone going ten directions at once, then ends with a very atmospheric coda with Kevin Hays playing a mesmerizing piano line and Vicente Archer sounding like three bassists at once punctuated by occasional Sadownick's slap-happy maracas. All in all, there's a suite-like thing going on as songs tend to fade into one another. Maybe not the Last Word in the Nu Jazz, but certainly a bold statement from a band to contend with.
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~ Nicholas Payton
~ Nicholas Payton
~ Roy Hargrove
~ Nicholas Payton
~ Nicholas Payton
by Nicholas Payton 
