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ROPEADOPE RAD317 [47:47]
Canción al licor de Ave
Moved by Clouds
En Otro Lugar
Something Unsettled
Intro to Verdict’s Out
Verdict’s Out
Recovered
Perdón
Farewell
Kyle Nasser (tenor and soprano sax): Yago Vazquez (piano and Rhodes): Pablo Menares (bass): Rodrigo Recabarren (drums)
Recorded October 2-15, Acoustic Recording Studios, Brooklyn, NYC
This multi-national quartet generates wholesome heat throughout the course of this nine-track album. All the music is written by the group’s members, four of the pieces by saxophonist Kyle Nasser. Rodrigo Recabarren generates plenty of vigorous drive on his own composition 1 where pianist Yago Vazquez’s piano reflections are cool and limpid and Nasser’s sax light-toned and allusive. But Nasser is a fine purveyor of asymmetric ideas as he shows on his own Moved by Clouds where the drummer’s insistent and intriguing patterns establish a strong sense of contrast with the other instruments. Vazquez clearly aligns himself to burnished classicism and there are times when his own statements are definably Classical, as in En Otro Lugar, where his poetic instincts are complemented by Nasser’s lyric tenor.
A different mood is established and sustained in Something Unsettled, a well-titled opus where use of the soprano sax and Fender Rhodes creates an altogether different sonic outcome, the soprano’s keening intensity and the group’s interplay of athleticism and reflection creating a fine structure. The briefIntro to Verdict’s Out, which prefaces the main event, Verdict’s Out, is an up-tempo attractive theme. Rather more anodyne is Recovered where for all Nasser’s soprano work and the band’s chops the music resolutely fails to engage. It’s much better to encounter the warm balladic envoi Farewell where the opening mood of lightly classical folk is supported by percussive wash and adroit bass pointing from Pablo Menares.
This New York-based quartet – Nasser the only American with Chilean and Spanish confrères - offer good value for money, ingratiating tunes and nice ensemble textures. Not all the tunes are equally well developed and I must note, yet again, the absence of any standards or even contemporary songs that Beekman could absorb into their repertoire as, say, powerhouse trios are prone to do. If they were to do so, it would make for an even better album.
Jonathan Woolf