High Energy Jazz From The Sydney Underground
(michaelgordon.bandcamp.com)
8/10
You know that feeling when you are idly daydreaming on the tracks and suddenly find the Indian Pacific rushing at you? Of course you do. Pressing play on this album is like that. I don’t just mean it generates unstoppable momentum, or even (as the title boasts) that it has hurtling energy. What initially hits you smack between the eyes is the sheer vitality of the sounds, so you are engaged before you’ve heard a complete line, let alone a whole piece. Were any one participant not blessed with this sonic vivacity the spell would never be cast, but it is shared equally by Michael Gordon’s tenor saxophone, Ken Allars’ trumpet, Tom Wade’s bass and Finn Ryan’s drums. Once you’ve been welcomed into the music by these sounds you find the viviacity replicated in the playing and compositions. Big Job mixes bebop, anarchy and friskiness in equal measure, Chumba Chumba nods a sly wink to Balkan Gypsy music, Crips Up is ostensibly a breezy blowing tune, only the breeze turns out to have the grit content of a sandstorm and Christchurch unleashes some seismic shocks.