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reviews |
from Dave Cunningham, Edmonton, Canada Man, I really enjoy this album. I have it on my laptop and I’ll often set it playing while I’m working and realize after an hour that I’ve been away and its over. What does it sound like? Well almost all the tunes are about a feeling rather than a groove and even the most robust of tunes tend to be meditative. That coupled with quite a bit of natural sound makes it the perfect disc for contemplative listening. Although Bob Day’s horn draws the inevitable comparisons with cool jazz stylings like Miles Davis, on the trans mountain series, you also hear echos of what for lack of a better word might be called the Canadian west coast sound. Paul Horn comes to mind on cuts like Migration. Gary Sill, I suppose, like many piano players before him draws a favorable comparision with the likes of Keith Jarrett, but again there’s that west coast jazz thing seeping in. He also has a penchance to sneak in allusions and rifts to what could only be describes as east Indian music and scales. Might be one of the reasons you don’t notice the time pass while you're listening. There is also a persistence of all things minor. After a bit of a listen you wonder if the two made a pact to never play a major chord. This contributes to the cool blue often mournful and lonely sound. That being said there are playfull almost hilarious tracks like “Chromatic” that break up the pacing and soft impressionistic tunes like “Rain Dance” to give the listener a change and a new point of view. But in the end the album always returns to the midnight mountain valley ghost train and a mournful C#m train whistle. |