This week's avant and radical jazz highlight Dance of The Evil Toys is stimulating. Begun counterintuitively with a tender non-avant Trudy Pitts ballad sung by the great pianist Orrin Evans (The Magic of Now, formerly Ethan Iverson's replacement in The Bad Plus), it's a reminder of a song that appeared two decades ago on Criss Cross release Blessed Ones which has a number of Pitts tunes.
The World Saxophone Quartet great Oliver Lake who turns 80 this autumn begins Lake's own piece 'Bonu' (also to be found serenely on the Lake and William Parker duo album To Roy) with such communicative, tender sound it's heartbreaking in a way so deftly followed by Evans. Lake is superb most of all on the very free 'Ke-Kelli' and on the Prince song at the end.
As we go through the album which has a good deal of variety and can not easily be pigeonholed which is to its credit prepare to jump into and out of an avant sensibility without seeing the process. Josh Lawrence on trumpet is significant on the title track.
Anchored by the classic Branford Marsalis Quartet bass star Eric Revis with the Bandwagon drummer Nasheet Waits as always eminently listenable to it's been a while since we heard anything by Tarbaby who are popular in continental Europe but don't really play the UK much ever.
They are certainly on our bucket list to see live going on this fine release. Best track is indeed the title track but there is an array. It folds in a percussion contribution from Dana Murray.
The antique isn't forgotten about and in this we also dug the Evans line at the outset of 'JRMJ' deftly accompanied by Waits. The surprise at the end is a cover of Prince and the Revolution's for the ages 1986 elegy 'Sometimes It Snows in April.'
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