See this review in its original context here.
"White Rocket has served up a dazzling and promising debut. This young trans-Atlantic trio first met and bonded over a shared love for Indian Carnatic music, Nick Drake and Meshuggah while attending Banff Centre for Jazz and Creative Music in 2005. Irish pianist Greg Felton and drummer Sean Carpio create dense, full-formed rhythmic harmonic figurations – the lack of a bassist hardly matters – and New York-based trumpeter Jacob Wick, who’s one of the most exciting and curious hornmen I’ve heard in the last few years, goes to town blowing over them. But there’s much more going on than muscular improvisation.
This trio relishes using rhythm as its primary building blocks. Felton never surrenders the insistent twitching pulse he establishes at the start of his tune "His Story," which establishes the group’s penchant for rigorous narrative qualities, through its title and the rising and falling dramatic arc of the tune. Wick’s turbulent "Recent Events" makes this tact more plain, with a dark, episodic density inspired by a shuffle of short, depressing and death-obsessed items from a cable news channel. A piece like "Hone" ratchets up the intensity by building some freer sections into the imperturbable structure, allowing Felton to unload some dazzling post-Cecil Taylor banging. Considering that these guys are still in their 20s, I can only imagine where they go from this auspicious beginning." – Peter Margasak
Leave Your Response