Rating:
Genre:
Jazz
Release Date: 02/01/2005
Boundary-pushing pianist
Jason Moran expands his sound yet again with a blend of modern electric and
acoustic blues on
Same Mother. Featuring longtime bassist
Tarus Mateen and drummer
Nasheet Waits,
Moran's seventh album also includes guitarist
Marvin Sewell. An equally adventurous musician,
Sewell adds a modern
blues sound to
Moran's usual mélange of
post-bop,
classical,
New Orleans jazz, and
funk. The results are raw, inspired, and frankly not wholly pleasing as
Sewell's crisp acoustic attack does not always blend well with
Moran's equally naked piano chops. However, for fans of both forward-thinking
jazz and roots music,
Same Mother -- a conceptual nod to the unifying notion that we are all ultimately descended from one mother -- holds considerable surprises. Notably,
Moran's
"Gangsterism On the Rise" is a bumptiously funky
avant-garde ride, while his
"G Suit Salvation" finds the group wading deep into softly
experimental Pat Metheny waters. Similarly, the atmospheric, Arabic-influenced
"Restin'" and
"Field of the Dead" (which
Moran deftly co-opts from
Sergei Prokofiev's 1938 score for the
Sergei Eisenstein film
Alexander Nevsky) are darkly epic
country-death
ballads featuring
Sewell's moaning acoustic slide guitar.
~Matt Collar, All Music Guide
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