Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » David Joel: Spiral Sky

269

David Joel: Spiral Sky

By

View read count
David Joel: Spiral Sky
It is much harder to recognize the inherent merit of any work when one has a bias against its form. Despite Spiral Sky's fusion stance, however, guitarist David Joel has created a musical opus of extreme beauty.

Each piece is like a well-crafted short story, with the ability to invoke a whole gamut of thoughts and emotions. The compositions, all by the Joel, are unique yet complementary to each other. In a time when most of what passes as fusion comes dangerously close to instrumental pop and elevator music, Joel's compositions are rich with substance without sacrificing form, and are extremely well-shaped. The richly mellifluous tracks are embellished by soaring improvised lines that go far away from the basic theme without losing sight of the melody.

The four musicians demonstrate a close rapport, forming a cohesive unit during the ensemble work, and unique individualities when soloing. The music is what one expects from a jazz-rock fusion recording, with a guitar and keyboard frontline supported by bass and drums, electric sounds and virtuoso solos. There are elements of gospel, funk and world music judiciously sprinkled in to spice things up a bit, with some references to the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

The highlights of this extremely enjoyable and rewarding listen are the complementary tracks "Eastern Truth and "Western Lies.

For those who enjoy fusion, Joel and his quartet have recorded a near masterpiece of the genre which only barely falls short of rivaling classics including the Mahavishnu Orchestra's The Inner Mounting Flame (Columbia, 1972) and Weather Report's Heavy Weather (Columbia, 1977).

Track Listing

The Dance Of Life; Eastern Truth; Western Lies; As It May End; The Star-Spangled Gospel; Spiral Sky; Little Bear Prelude; Little Bear; Other Side Of The Sun.

Personnel

David Joel
guitar

David Joel: guitars; John Stenger: keyboards; Paul Gehman: bass; Dan Monaghan: drums.

Album information

Title: Spiral Sky | Year Released: 2007 | Record Label: Self Produced

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.