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Blake Tartare

Before wholeheartedly embracing jazz music in my early forties, I had made a few only partially successful attempts to get to grips with it over the prior decade. About five or six years before the lightbulb was finally illuminated, there had been some fitful flickerings ca. 2005/6, during which time I came to hear of Canadian saxophonist Michael Blake. The first of his albums I bought was one called Drift, which I'd found courtesy of an Amazon recommendation. I liked it well enough to acquire another of his records, again on CD: Blake Tartare.

It's a 2005 release (on the Copenhagen-based Stunt label) of music recorded in 2002. The Danish angle ties in with Blake's backing band on this occasion coming from that country: Soren Kjærgaard plays piano; Jonas Westergaard bass and Kresten Osgood the drums. The (non-Danish) Teddy Kumpel joins them on guitar on three of the tracks. It's not an album that seems to have made much of a splash anywhere, but it's one I've remained very fond of since acquiring it.

The opening track 'Flipper' is quietly atmospheric scene-setting. It's followed by 'Lemmy Caution', my favourite number on the disc, which begins similarly softly, if more purposefully, at length swelling in a powerful crescendo. 'A Messy Business' falls into three sections slow-fast-slow over its 10+ minute duration. 'Cuban Sandwich' and 'Feast' have Latin and African flavours respectively, with a hypnotic groove at the heart of the latter. Spirited interpretations of Sun Ra's 'Lanquidity' and Mingus' 'Meditation (for a Pair of Wirecutters)' follow, with two more mellower tracks rounding out what is an excellent album.

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