Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord: Quavers! Quavers! Quavers! Quavers! (2011)

GLENN ASTARITA,

Glenn Astarita

Senior Contributor since 1997

Longtime contributor to AAJ and Downbeat, Jazz Review, EjazzNews, Radio DirectX.

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Published: January 8, 2012

Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord: Quavers! Quavers! Quavers! Quavers!

Track review of "Ears Like a Fox"

Since 2003, guitarist Jon Lundbom and his Big Five Chord unit have been crashing and slashing through the jazz-rock idiom, often lying on the perimeter of the avant-garde spectrum. With a support band comprised of solo artists and first-call session aces, the music is often hard-edged and chockfull of off-kilter innuendoes and ballsy soloing excursions.

Lundbom's intense phrasings and mind-altering solo spots can exude a semblance of systematic paranoia or command the ensemble like a diesel-powered automaton, wielding a mass of destruction through a heavily populated metropolis. On "Ears Like a Fox," these notions come to fruition, launched by drummer Danny Fischer's parade music-like snare rolls and followed by the saxophonist's darting notes atop thrusting grooves.

The piece is constructed on a touch of pathos, incorporated by the saxophonist's authoritarian impetus, where rancorous aerial assaults heighten the pitch. Here, Lundbom primes for the kill via animated and briskly executed single-note licks designed from the bottom up, bringing it all back home, as the band closes out with a contorted burnout.

The album is not all about slash and burn, yet Lundbom's compositions are often shaped with progressive jazz, rock and shrewdly arranged cosmic disruptions—tendering a converse perspective without playing it safe or sticking to conventional formats—which are accelerators that engender the group's customized scope of attack.

Personnel: Jon Lundbom: guitar; Jon Irabagon: alto and sopranino saxophones; Bryan Murray: tenor and balto! saxophones; Moppa Elliott: bass; Danny Fischer: drums; Matt Kanelos: keyboards.

Record Label: Hot Cup Records