Jazz Punks: Jazz Punks: Smashups (2012)

GLENN ASTARITA,

Glenn Astarita

Senior Contributor since 1997

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

Recent articles (1,629 total)

Published: May 9, 2012

Track review of "Led Gillespie"

A homogenous and playfully bastardized take on modern jazz, the Los Angeles-based Jazz Punks offers a rather chic, and youthful blend of jazz, punk-rock and rock on its debut outing. It's an undulating approach and at times, pleasantly schizophrenic by design. Here, electric guitarist Sal Polcino looms as the bridge between the rock and jazz element to augment the all-acoustic instrumentation tendered by his cohorts. The album comprises a hodgepodge of quotes and lucid interpretations of jazz and rock classics, morphed into a buoyant stance where no particular genre dominates.

A noteworthy example of the artists' output is "Led Gillespie," comprised of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia and Led Zeppelin's "Misty Mountain Hop." With soulful and jazzy interludes, hard-rock guitar licks and lightly swinging breakouts, the band translucently morphs a genre-hopping component into a common thread. During interludes such as pianist Danny Kastner's nimbly articulated solo, accelerated with weighty block chords, the band toggles between the rock and bop modalities, shaped with a soulful edge and a briskly paced gait.

The quintet proclaims a harmonious set of paradigms via a thoroughly hip campaign that offers insight into the boundless applications and possibilities inherent within the principal components of jazz.

Personnel: Sal Polcino: guitar; Hugh Elliot: drums; Robby Elfman: sax; Danny Kastner: piano; Michael Polcino: bass.

Record Label: Self Produced
Style: Beyond Jazz