LUME: Xabregas 10

LUME is the acronym for the Lisbon Underground Music Ensemble, which is a large mini-big band type unit, captured live and arranged by pianist Marco Barroso who also penned the compositions. With prog rock nuances and some Frank Zappa style horn charts, the ensemble pushes the envelope from start to finish. It's a stinging presentation that may send tingles down your spine. Moreover, the album is dedicated to the late soprano saxophonist and band member, Jorge Reis.

Complete with pulsing beats and powerful in-your-face horn charts, the musicians offset the festivities with quirky detours and intermittent use of EFX. The preponderance of these four works feature zesty choruses, wily free-form improv segments and layered soundscapes, primarily framed with oscillating horns and slamming funk and rock beats. Toss a few zany metrics into the picture and some dazzling time signatures and you have an asymmetrical montage of genre-busting outbursts integrated throughout.

"Polen" is underscored with a spacy mid-tempo funk rock overture, shadowed by harrowing electronics. However, electric bassist Andre Sousa Machado enlists a twofold attack via his soaring lines and melodic intervals. It's all consummated by Goncalo Marques' otherworldly muted trumpet solo as the temperature rises leading to closeout. But the final track "LSW," is akin to a musical jigsaw puzzle, interspersed with old movie audio snippets, including Elvis—or perhaps someone imitating him —and some mayhem amid the brash horns. Moving forward into this piece, the ensemble embarks upon a massive free- form deconstruction effort that suggests noise music, yet it's a tad superfluous and may have benefitted from some prudent editing. Otherwise, the ensemble delivers the knockout wallop with tons of chutzpah and a high-strung gait, seemingly fueled by hefty doses of adrenalin.

Comments