Matt Ulery’s
Loom
Wake An Echo
Greenleaf
1031
***
Bassist Matt
Ulery has followed up last year’s ambitious large ensemble release By A Little Light with a much smaller
group but that does not mean it is any less rich in scope. His quintet, buoyed
by a standard piano/bass/drums rhythm section, features a unique frontline:
trumpeter Marquis Hill and bass clarinetist Geof Bradfield. The pair blends their
voices to create a lot of different textures that help fill out Ulery’s
intricate charts with sounds seemingly larger than two sets of lungs puffing
away.
Ulery wrote
all the sweepingly cinematic tunes for this album as well as playing double
bass. Opener “The Lady Vanishes” pulsates between languid, searching jaunts
while “In Every Lonely Chamber” summons the ghosts of a thousand lovelorn
detectives trying to figure out where they went wrong. With the limited
instrumentation, Ulery has created a unified sound. Solo spaces are generous
for most of the band but the bass itself hangs way in the back.
Unfortunately,
pianist Rob Clearfield’s presence is front and center. His relentless approach on
the record pounds through measure after measure on many of the uptempo tunes
with little space for rests. Some of his solo jaunts can be downright
exhausting, filling a lot of space with trills and arpeggios where silence
would be perfectly acceptable. His dizzying bombast kind of works on
“Coriander” where drummer Jon Deilemyer matches his fervor with his own spins
and crashes but Clearfield pushes it even further on the following track, “Over
Under Other,” eventually running like a faucet into an overflowing sink. He
switches to accordion for “My Favorite Stranger” and the confines work nicely
in conjunction with Hill, laying down a reedy pad for the trumpeter to build
upon. More of those accordion interactions would have been welcome on this
album.
Wake An
Echo: The Lady Vanishes; In Every Lonely Chamber; Coriander; Over Under Other;
My Favorite Stranger; Carefree; All the Riven. (56:23)
Personnel:
Marquis Hill, trumpet; Geof Bradfield, bass clarinet; Rob Clearfield, piano
& accordion; Matt Ulery, double bass; Jon Deilemyer, drums & cymbals.
Ordering
info: www.greenleafmusic.com
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