Search - Drew Gress :: Spin & Drift

The Freshest New Jazz You May Hear This Year

Stephen Silberman | SF, CA USA | 09/04/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Finally, what we've all been waiting for: an album by brilliant young players who comprehend the free-jazz challenge without diving off into Formless Cacophony; who understand that top-level post-modern jazz can be gloriously beautiful; who swing like monsters without falling back on tried-and-true "traditional" devices; and who are determined to create music that honors the tradition without putting on Mingus or Ellington or Davis drag. This is the stuff, folks.I've wanted to love Uri Caine for a long time, but his playing here seems more focused, dare I say straight-ahead, and lyrical than on his various other projects. Tim Berne is a flaming genius in any mode, including Cacophony-land, but here his playing gains emotional intensity by staying within consonant realms, while losing none of his idiosyncratic approaches to time. (Multitracking Berne: brilliant idea!) Rainey is an underrated, very sensitive player, featured well here, and swinging mightily. And Dress is a stunning addition to the vocabulary of modern jazz bass, as well as emerging here as a very fine composer. I've been trying to come up with comparisons for his compositional sense, and coming up dry -- it ain't like Mingus, it ain't like Monk, it ain't like Shorter, and it ain't that watered-down European chamber jazz either, which pretty much exhausts the roster of influences young players are enamored by these days. Gress's tunes are sui generis, his Own Thing. I can't wait to hear more of them as his career unfolds.His pedal steel playing here is pretty wonderful too, as if he'd invented a new jazz voicing.If you're a young player yourself, pick this up to glimpse a road into the future of jazz that doesn't point to mere enervated hiphop hybrids, noise, or Marsalisian Ellington hommages. If you're an older jazz fan: The kids are alright!"

An oddly neglected masterpiece

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 03/28/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's not as if these guys lack jazz credentials; they've played in some of the most adventurous settings over the past decade. The question arises: Why hasn't this disc been more highly regarded--heck, even been enshrined in the out-jazz hall of fame?My conclusion? It's just too good.Or, perhaps it's a case of falling between two stools. There is a group of musicians that has more successfully positioned itself as the leaders of the avant-garde: Downtowners, academicians, out-warriors, free-jazz masters. No need to name names; those familiar with the jazz scene know who these bands are. Another group has positioned itself as the conservators of the Tradition. Again, no need to identify them; they and we know who they are.When a group as highly skilled in all aspects of contemporary jazz idiom as this comes along--a group such as Drew Gress's band here on Spin and Drift--there is a tendency for them to get lost. On the one hand, they're not as startling and aggressively avant-garde as some other outfits; on the other hand, they're not as slavishly conforming to the tradition as other outfits (esp. those emanating from the Crescent City). Consequently, they can easily get lost in the welter of mediocre jazz releases. It doesn't help to be on a tiny independent jazz label, Premonition Records.But if real friends of jazz can somehow get fight their way through all these unfortunate trappings, what they will find in this sparkling, revelatory recording is some of the very finest hip, contemporary jazz music. First of all, these players are at the very top echelon of younger, visionary jazz practitioners. Uri Caine should need no introduction to the serious jazz fan. Currently holding the piano (actually, Fender Rhodes) chair in Dave Douglas's Quintet, he is among the most harmonically, rhythmically, and conceptually advanced of the current crop of remarkable jazz pianists. He does nothing here except advance his already august standing as one of the more adventurously melodic pianist on the scene today. Drummer Tom Rainey, a stalwart of the Downtown scene, plays with an uncanny deftness and dexterity, constantly grounding this music in spectacular polyrhythmic settings entirely apposite to its modernistic and worldly affinities. Tim Berne, a saxophonist of the highest accomplishment, leader of his own remarkable unit, Science Friction, founder of his own label, Screwgun, here plays with masterful sonority and authority. I especially enjoy his baritone playing. This difficult instrument often comes saddled with an unattractive timbre, a kind of piercing, growling intensity that is aurally off-putting. Berne has completely mastered this awkward instrument, and delivers the finest bari solo on record that I have ever heard ("The Sledmouth Chronicles"). The leader seems entirely aware of the weight and gravitas of previous double-bass band leaders such as Charles Mingus, Charlie Haden, and Dave Holland. Consistently feeding his bandmates smart vehicles for group improvisation, conversation, and soloing, he also establishes himself as one of the absolute masters of contemporary double-bass playing, right up there with Haden, Holland, John Pattituci, and Ben Allison.Consisting of all Gress original tunes, some of which sound like instant classics ("It Was After the Rain That the Angel Came," "Here at the Bottom of the Sky") and all of which are eminently enjoyable, Spin and Drift strikes me as one of the finest documents of cutting-edge modernist jazz, entirely approachable, eminently listenable, and enduring in its singularity and uniqueness.A hidden gem of huge proportions."

Essential listening

David Allen | New York, NY USA | 04/21/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a record one returns to again and again. Such rich, complex playing and writing. One of the best in the last several years."