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Donny McCaslin: Perpetual Motion

  Tobias Fischer

Given that he’s as comfortable with standards and fusion-workouts as he is with modern experimentation, it’d be correct to tag jazz saxplayer McCaslin as a firebrand voice of the current New Yawk pack.

In this 9th solo record he’s free as a bird, his flights accelerated by the whiz-bang keyboards (mainly Rhodes, a slam-dunkedly agreeable choice) of Adam Benjamin and Uri Caine. Quiet, simmering urban fusion kicks things off (“Five Hands Down”), and right away McCaslin sets to making the thing a clinic, walking modal high-wires that at one point involve his sax making like a xylophone.

His legend will certainly grow after wonks get a load of the million-notes-a-minute moves that shower the title track, new-jack wailing meeting the old-school notion of a serious, very serious jazz album in every respect.

By Eric Saeger

Homepage: Donny McCaslin
Homepage: Greenleaf Records