Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Ken Field: Pictures Of Motion

Ken Field: Pictures Of Motion

By AAJ Staff
June 1, 2000
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Ken Field has crafted thirteen sonic pictures of pure sax excellence. They range from introspectively dark or airy ambience to peppy, bopping bounces. This is a stroll down neon-lit alleyways of mod jazz hipness. Some pieces are somber, solo, alto saxophone, sometimes layered or effects-altered and others are amplified with drums, acoustic bass, fretless electric bass, drums and percussion. Best references for what is happening here are adventurous works by Dave Binney, Theo Travis, Gallery, Paul McCandless, and mellower Lost Tribe. I should also say Field’s compositional stylings on ambient tracks reminded me a great deal of Mark Isham’s writing for his new age trumpet works, as on Isham’s Vapor Drawings.

I admired and enjoyed every minute of this progressive jazz. Field has the fiery Jessica Lurie guesting on alto sax. She is the leading reed lady in the modern fusion jazz trio, Living Daylights. To close, I offer yet more adverbs to corral Field’s music – minimalist, chamber acid-jazz, drunkenly migrating geese being followed by interdimensional hornets offering tracts on transcendental meditation. (Translation: New music/ JIO ,JazzInOpposition)/Ambient jazz) Dig it!

Reprinted with the permission of John Collinge and Progression Magazine .

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