Sometimes strutting, and often soulful, the Leeds-based jazz-electro-rock band ‘Adult Jazz’ explore musical movement in a way that is slightly dark, often a little flirty, generally a trifle eccentric and always increasingly stealthy. Their mastery of the more curious ravines, gully routes and nether-regions of jazz’s more pongy areas is starting to attract a lot of attention.
Their jurisdiction over these these sparkling – yet odoriferous – moments is acutely demonstrated on tracks like ‘Am Gone’ with those nut-filled beats, odd chips of percussion and snakelike guitars that twine around bleating vocals as if they are liturgical stoles draped around the ghastly gangly limbs of street prostitutes. But here-and-there the voice is sweet and watery – it springs is like a nymph from the soul of the song – to rise unhindered and light – before disrupting into the spirited ether.
‘Springful’ is another elixir of sounds and short phrases – with more changes of pace than you might ever imagine. It is an expanse of inventiveness and simply amazing. Some ideas clout you around the head like a teachers wrist – others simply fringe layers of other ideas like dusty doilies.The vocals are always expressed with confidence – and they rattle along so cheerful – that they seem quite at odds with the convolutions of the other contrived sounds. It’s a bewildering amalgam of shapes and textures – yet somehow pleasant and completely infectious.
– © Neil_Mach February 2014 –
Link:
https://www.facebook.com/adultjazz
