Clay Wulbrecht: The Clockmaster

Composer and pianist Clay Wulbrecht's new album, Clockmaster, has a sound and cadence all its own. The sound is produced using various blends of instruments, plus reverb, electronics and perhaps other special effects, while the rhythms flow naturally from their pop, rock, blues, R&B and funk roots into Wulbrecht's imaginative hands.

The question is, to what extent is jazz a part of Wulbrecht's blueprint? Even though the harmonic substratum often suggests a jazz-like patina, there is on many of the album's 10 numbers little in the way of improvisation, which remains the music's lifeline and bedrock. For the most part, uncommon rhythms and tight group interplay maintain the leading edge with improv and spontaneity relegated basically to an afterthought.

Taken in its entirety, the session has an almost ethereal quality not often associated with jazz as the term is generally used, even though jazz's sonic and rhythmic boundaries have been greatly altered and extended in the last, say, 50 or so years, as free jazz and other iterations have made significant inroads into what many consider the music's traditional base. Wulbrecht's choice of instrumentation mirrors that change, as he relies heavily on guitars, percussion, strings and sundry audio devices to press home his message.

While the upshot is hard to summarize in a few words, suffice to say that it is unlike most other recordings that profess to invoke jazz as their emblem, as Wulbrecht keeps the listener consistently off-balance via a diversity of moods and mechanisms that are designed to do exactly that. Besides the instruments, Wulbrecht uses the human voice to good effect on several numbers, inserting brief remarks often when they are least expected.

Even though The Clockmaster may leave many middle-of-the-road jazz fans scratching their heads and wondering what Wulbrecht must have been thinking, there is an audience for his music, one that may welcome his eccentric compositions and arrangements with pleasure and enthusiasm, else he would not be creating them. That audience is not active here, hence the less-than-eager reception for Wulbrecht and his themes.