The Roadstars Jazz Band
New and Improved
Self-released
New and Improved, the tongue-in-cheek title of The Roadstars Jazz Band, is a charming collection of jazz favorites that bop and tug at your heartstrings. Long-time Roadstars band leader Lance Buller is a showman to the last bit, and the band’s charisma transcends the optical disc.
Buller kicks us off with quick and tight trumpet licks on “Lester Leaps In” and continues with tasteful trumpet solos and wistful verses on “Just Friends.” Teddy Dortch’s masterful flute and saxophone playing dazzles us, with a particularly moving saxophone solo on Jimmy Van Heusen’s “Polka Dots & Moonbeams.” Guitarist Chris Spencer and bass player Chuck Kistler play with elegant reserve on the Horace Silver favorite “Song For My Father” and Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”
Drummer Ken French transitions seamlessly through the generations of music, taking us as far back as 1919 with the final track “Royal Garden Blues,” one of the earliest popular jazz tunes written by Spencer Williams.
The album is filled with jives, laughs, and audacious solos, and fits perfectly inside every car stereo and CD player. Better yet, if you’re entertaining any nuptial notions hire these guys immediately!
–Edan Kroliwecz
Paul Kikuchi
Bat of No Bird Island
Prefecture Music
A coarse wind of memories. The ether crackling, like the sound of hooves, the wobbles of a spinning record, the twang of highly pitched polyphonic metallic percussion, and an older man’s voice, speaking in whispers. Contemplation and dance, the strings hit, weave, and bend. Wind chimes shimmer, plucks of the đàn nguyet. An old waltz, and a trembling trombone, commanded in time by the woodblock’s beat. The creaking of the floorboards and haunting echoes. The old world, the new world, exploring cardinal directions and values.
Bat of No Bird Island is “a song-cycle inspired by the memoir and 78rpm record collection of Zenkichi Kikuchi, the composer’s great grandfather.” These modern takes on traditional Japanese music employs walkie-talkies, 78rpm record samples, conches, and đàn nguyet, which bridge the cultural themes. From the organization of the simple, the sublime.
Kikuchi’s skill is not only in finding unique instrumentation and sounds. He has a compositional instinct for creating startling rhythmic events that push and pull you through the album and leaves an impression that you are dealing with at once an intellectual and raw art form. He is currently residing in Japan as a fellow of the Japan – US Friendship Commission Creative Artist Program.
Musicians on Bat of No Bird Island are Paul Kikuchi (percussion, walkie talkie), Tari Nelson-Zagar (violin), Eyvind Kang (viola), Maria Scherer Wilson (cello), Stuart Dempster (trombone and conches), Rob Millis (78 rpm records), and Bill Horist (guitar, walkie talkie and đàn nguyet).
–EK
Chamber 3
Grassroots
OA2 Records
Seattle drummer Matt Jorgensen and German guitarist Christian Eckert have joined forces once again to produce an impassioned album. Each track explores an artistic struggle: inspiration, concentration, and passion, blended together into a cohesive and contemplative whole.
The title track, “Grassroots,” showcases the articulate saxophone playing of German musician Steffen Weber. Weber’s smooth ebb and flow combines with the ringing guitar which envelops the up tempo polyphony of “Tattooed By Passion,” a tune Jorgensen reimagined from his previous album of the same name. Scratching tape effects and metallic reverberations highlight “Uphill Struggle,” an ambitious tune lined with heavy meandering saxophone solos that paint the text, lightening and expanding, and finally returning.
Chamber 3 added a much-welcomed Phil Sparks, a tasteful and understated musician, on the bass. On “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Sparks and Eckert connect the steady foundation of the unique twist to the track’s famous chorus. The snake-charming sax on “Song for Sam” is perhaps the most creative departure as the crew rides and swings straight.
Jorgensen’s Beauford-esque rhythmic explorations cover the map: hip hop, straight-ahead jazz, and open-hand infusions with inventive fills and hits. Chamber 3 has been touring in Germany for the early part of 2015, and we anticipate their return.
–EK
