David Binney & Edward Simon: Oceanos

Vocalist Luciana Souza's over-the-top vocalise serves as an additional instrumental voice amid these mood-evoking vistas spiced with Latin rhythms and multilayered horns. Binney's climactically-driven sax solos offer gobs of thematic nuances during these largely medium-tempo jaunts highlighting Simon's eloquent and often-nimble phrasings. On "Impossible Question, Simon and guitarist Adam Rogers go head to head as Blade's offbeat accents assist with positioning a framework for the horn sections punchy choruses. And in other regions of sound and scope, the artists pursue interleaving passages and strategically-placed dynamics with buoyantly executed slices of Brazilian music.

Binney redefines the primary melody during his beautifully constructed solo on "Twenty Four Miles to Go, where sinuous and ascending lines transmit a hip and modernistic jazz vibe. Otherwise, this is an attractive outing that doesn't veer off into abstruse angles or sway heavily into specific genres. Binney and Simon effectively incorporate a succession of multilayered arrangements that seamlessly integrate the base elements of Latin music into the modern-mainstream jazz vernacular.

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