Vector Families: For Those About To Jazz / Rock We Salute You

Drummer Dave King (The Bad Plus, Dave King Trucking Company) has been a significant protagonist within the burgeoning Minneapolis / St. Paul progressive jazz scene amid various ensembles' —including Vector Families —stark experimentalism. Here, the drummer along with esteemed veteran bassist Anthony Cox steer the mutable groove-building episodes on an album that places jazz rock inside an avant-garde dynamic. Hence, these compositions are executed with asymmetrical parts improvisation and structure.

With the opener "Free Funk!," King ignites the proceedings with a crisp and hard-hitting pulse, as saxophonist Brandon Wozniak's crusty lines and imaginative improv lead the quartet into a rowdy fast-paced tempo, marked by the frontline's high-velocity soloing. Moreover, anything is subject to change as the intertwining dialogues provide a fertile pathway for composition-based redevelopment on a continual basis.

Certain movements contain a sense of openness along with reverberating call / response mechanisms. However, the artists totally deconstruct Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's eternal classic "Satin Doll." Although "10,000-Year Old Rotary Club commences rather sedately, then blossoms into a gradually intensifying storyline, teeming with gobs of extended improvisational segments and clocking in at nearly 18-minutes. Whereas, Ornette Coleman's "Dee Dee" is a mid-tempo swing, augmented with rumbling choruses via the quartet's soaring gait as Wozniak and guitarist Dean Granos trade power-packed licks, escalated by the latter's distortion tinged free-jazz / rock guitar phrasings, operated at a frenetic pace.

Due to the personnel I initially suspected this would not be your plain old vanilla jazz rock fare. Nonetheless, the band's raw sound and vibrant free-form explorations generate a series of interconnecting applications culled from modern jazz, rock, funk and perhaps a few nods to the fabled British free jazz scene.