Boogie In the Breeze Blocks

Album Review

The word "humorous" is seldom used to describe avant-garde jazz, but there are a few exceptions to that rule. Trombonist Ray Anderson and the Reptet can be delightfully humorous, and humor is clearly one of Talibam!'s strong points on Boogie in the Breeze Blocks. Pianist/keyboardist Matthew Mottel and drummer Kevin Shea (the leaders of the New York City-based group) aren't jazz purists or acoustic snobs by any stretch of the imagination, but free jazz is a major ingredient on this 2009 release — and Talibam! combine electric free jazz with a variety of rock (including punk, noise rock, and psychedelic rock) and have also been influenced by funk, soul, blues, and ska. But Boogie in the Breeze Blocks, for all its abstraction and eccentricity, is not an exercise in total chaos or non-stop atonality. Parts of the disc are very free-form, but parts of it have grooves and hooks that listeners can easily sink their teeth into — and unlike most electric free jazz, Boogie in the Breeze Blocks uses vocals extensively (singing as well as spoken word and bits of goofy dialogue). The vast majority of electric free jazz albums are totally instrumental, but vocalists (including Danielle Kuhlmann, who appears on eight selections) are an important part of the picture on this 46-minute CD. The use of vocalists, however, doesn't mean that Talibam! ever resort to a conventional verse/ chorus/verse/chorus format; this is, after all, free jazz (or "free rock" if you want to call it that), and the vocals are used in a very stream-of-consciousness fashion just like the horn and guitar solos. Sometimes, the male vocals/female vocals interaction on Boogie in the Breeze Blocks brings to mind eccentric rockers like Buttsteak and the B-52's; again, Talibam! never claimed to be jazz purists, although they obviously see the parallels between rebellious free jazz and rebellious rock — and their sense of humor is a major asset throughout this promising effort.