SAKURA
(Studio Songs)
6.5/10
Steve Barry’s Insen is a gorgeous ballad to slow the mind and engender a languid wistfulness of mood. It is a mood common to all musical cultures, and here shows the depth of rapport within this cosmopolitan, cross-generational band. Orbiturtle consists of two Sydney based players – alto saxophonist Dave Jackson (an Australian) and pianist Steve Barry (a New Zealander) – and two Japanese musicians, bassist Yoshio Suzuki and drummer Ko Omura, with Suzuki being a generation older than the others. The common language is jazz, which often becomes a light, skimming medium in their collective hands. It is this weightlessness or a sense that the music’s windows have been thrown open that define the project: a cool-jazz aesthetic that is applied to tunes by Barry, Omura and Jackson, with precision, engaging soloing and nifty arrangements. While the players themselves are distinctive, the cultural nexus results in surprisingly little to set the music apart from American models, however. Perhaps a more regional sound may evolve if the project continues – not by adding a stray shakuhachi, but by expanding the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic possibilities.