Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Flipside: Flipside

103

Flipside: Flipside

By

View read count
Flipside: Flipside
New York City based “Flipside” is a multinational quartet featuring New Zealanders Matt Penman (bass), Greg Tuohey (guitar), Irish drummer Darren Beckett and French saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh. “Flipside” is about strong grooves, sensitive group interplay and adequate breathing room for the soloists as in Matt Penman’s composition, “The Magic Beans”. Here, Jerome Sabbagh leads the charge with his fluent, breezy Soprano Sax phrasing and serves as the traffic cop through meticulously developed thematic statements. Greg Tuohey’s warm, animated guitar choruses underscore Jerome Sabbagh’s smooth, eloquent tenor sax work on Sabbagh’s “Numero 6”.

Positive vibes abound as Flipside convey a modern demeanor yet maintain and artfully display traditional jazz concepts as in Greg Tuohey’s “Stretch”. On this piece, the boys jazz it up some, featuring the polyrhytmic drumming of Darren Beckett alongside Matt Penman’s rapidly walking bass line. Greg Tuohey’s “Nude” is a somber ballad as Tuohey performs passionately with nicely developed chord voicings and precise, clear-toned single note runs. “Nude” features sonorous yet understated bass lines from Penman who negotiates the common ground, which boasts striking melodies and brilliant tonal colors. Penman’s “High Times” is up-tempo and supported by Beckett’s firm backbeat and intermittent doses of power drumming counterbalancing Sabbagh’s lyrical and spirited tenor sax choruses.

Part of Flipside’s magic lies within compositions constructed around memorable hooks and themes, which effectively counter the imaginative soloing and prevailing sense of space. A surprisingly mature debut effort featuring solid, fertile material and superb craftsmanship.

Personnel

Matt Penman; Bass: Greg Tuohey; Guitar: Jerome Sabbagh; Tenor & Soprano Saxophone: Darren Beckett; Drums. 1998 Naxos Jazz (web: www.hnh.com)

Album information

Title: Flipside | Year Released: 1999

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Eternal Moments
Yoko Yates
From "The Hellhole"
Marshall Crenshaw
Tramonto
John Taylor

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.