Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Jim Hobbs & the Fully Celebrated Orchestra: Lapis Exilis
Jim Hobbs & the Fully Celebrated Orchestra: Lapis Exilis
ByThis is most pronounced on the album's opening track "Lord of Creatures, a "Lonely Woman -ish dirge with a magnetically memorable theme and robust soloing from Hobbs and Bynum over a shifting bass drone. The two horn players revel in microtone, using sharp or flat intonation, Ornette-style, to serve their musical purposesthen pop effortlessly back into conventional pitch.
Sometimes this produces a different effect. On the cheerfully loping country waltz "Ol' Lady Who?" or the spaghetti-western faux-Morricone album closer "Farewell"perhaps you're getting an impression of the group's musical reachHobbs' flatting produces a slightly queasy, drunken-wedding-band effect that borders on parody and is somewhat evocative of Frank Zappa at his most affectionate.
If the music is playful, it is never contemptuous, and the playing is always committed. The Shanko bass solo that introduces "Three Rivers" is a great song in its own right; once the song proper gets going, Bynum's richly lyrical cornet solo dazzles with crisply articulated runs as well as husky growls and oily slurshe's truly the perfect match for Hobbs. Carranza excels everywhere: he swings like Max Roach on "Billylillylillybilly," and on "The Mackie Burnette" (which opens with furious, skronking sax from Hobbs that's as lacerating as something from Peter Brötzmann), he plays devastating, machine-consistent dub-reggae (the added studio reverb helps). And then there's his turn-hugging snare work on the impossible start-stop math rhythms of "Throne of Osiris"one gets the impression you could drop this guy into a polka, speed metal, or country-swing band with very successful resultsas long as you didn't tell him to play too soft.
Lapis Exilis is a great CD from a powerhouse group. There are moments where the level of Ornette Coleman influence is almost distractingbut this is far from the birth-of-free-jazz equivalent of Dixieland devotees slavishly playing Sidney Bechet licks (not that there's anything wrong with that, either). Jim Hobbs and the Fully Celebrated Orchestra play virtuoso jazz music with a marked eclecticism, and if Ornette looms large in their eclectic range of influenceswell, shouldn't he for everyone?
Track Listing
1. Lord of Creatures 2. Throne of Osiris 3. Ol' Lady Who? 4. The Mackie Burnette 5. Apple Orchard and the Worm 6. Three Rivers 7. Billylillylillybilly 8. Lapis Exilis 9. Farewell
Personnel
Jim Hobbs
saxophone, altoJim Hobbs: alto saxophone; Timo Shanko: bass; Taylor Ho Bynum: cornet; Django Carranza: drums
Album information
Title: Lapis Exilis | Year Released: 2005 | Record Label: Skycap Records
Comments
About Jim Hobbs
Instrument: Saxophone, alto
Related Articles | Concerts | Albums | Photos | Similar To