Robert Diack: Small Bridges

It is heartening to hear a new artist coming on strong.

Drummer Robert Diack's self-released debut, Lost Villages, placed the artist in the visionary column of jazz artists, as he spotlighted, with an original voice, the concept concerning a series of flooded townships in Southern Ontario, Canada, places put underwater in the 1950s for the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Diack's sophomore effort, Small Bridges, expresses the artist's tribulations with his relocation from Canada to New York City, the resultant culture shock and isolation that ensued.

With Diack—on both his albums—focus is the word that comes to mind. Using the same ensemble on both albums, with guitar, piano, bass, drums and synthesizers, the drummer/keyboardist paints a complex layering of sounds to make modern pop-rockish soundscapes giving way to folk-like interludes alongside dense washes of hard core electricity. The voice is original and compelling, with parallels to sound painters like trumpeters Jon Hassell and Arve Henriksen, pianist Brad Mehldau—on his more experimental work, like Largo (Warner Bros., 2002)—and guitarist Steve Tibbetts.

If the music needs a tag, "modernistic chamber sounds" could be used. Or "assertive ambience, with an occasional understated country twang."

Diack seems ambitious. He has contributed his production skills to albums and singles of his fellow artists, with an intent to craft distinctive sound designs, something he does adeptly on his own recordings. Is an expansion of his sound palette coming in the future? Seems likely, given the beautifully orchestral aspect of his two quartet albums.

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