David Blake Quartet

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David Blake Quartet: Radio Casual

by Jack Bowers
August 5, 2026

To gain a clear picture of the sort of high-caliber straight-ahead jazz Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based guitarist David Blake's quartet has to offer on Radio Casual, go directly to “Nut Bread," the second track, bypassing the more offbeat, effects-enhanced opener, “Jonas with a View" (the “Jonas" presumably a reference to the group's drummer, Jonas Esser). There is one other outlier, the shadowy “Dew Sweeper," but as Blake wrote and arranged every number, he quite obviously charted every course, plain-speaking or otherwise.