aaamusic | On 26, Feb 2012

Is it just me, or is it about time we, as intelligent music fans, stood up and had a respectful minute silence for saxophone players? Take it from someone who tried to learn, the sax is not an easy instrument to learn, they’re uniformly heavy, cumbersome and inexpressibly painful on the lips, and once one does get used to it, producing a note that doesn’t sound like Satan scratching a blackboard takes the kind of time and effort usually reserved for an election campaign (there’s a politics joke in there somewhere…) and after all that, chances are that if you don’t play rather traditional Jazz, your musical attempts will utterly, utterly fail. Case in point the last time a saxophone solo was heard on a hit single it was Katy Perry’s TGIF. And it was played by Kenny G. Yeah. With that in mind, talk must turn to Get The Blessing’s new album, a Jazz record, for sure, but not as we know it. There’s sax all over it, but does it work? …Probably. Let me explain.

 

I’ll be right up front about it. This particular critic is no real Jazz fan, or at least the kind of Jazz I like is song based (ELLA FITZGERALD MAKES THE WORLD GO AROUND), rather than instrumental. This, save for some vocal harmonies, is pretty much entirely instrumental, this raises my hackles almost immediately but I can’t bring myself to hate this record, quite simply because there is so much that is undeniably ace about it. The musicianship is frighteningly good and rightfully so, the pedigree features the long time rhythm section of Portishead, bassist Jim Barr and drummer Clive Deamer, and Jazz luminaries Jake McMurchie and Pete Judge on Saxophone and trumpet respectively. To say these guys know what they’re doing is a laughable understatement, it makes the phrase telepathy redundant, the whole record feels as natural as breathing and it really benefits from the lead instrument being Barr’s bass, he leads the quartet like he was born to do it, anchoring the songs like on Adagio in Wot Minor and releasing the hounds on the title track.

 

Unfortunately, my own personal hang ups stop me from loving this record. Which is a shame because there’s so much going for it, it’s not even as self indulgent as I interpret most instrumental jazz to be, there’s few solo’s and everything seems to be there to benefit the track. For me, personally the record just doesn’t appeal to me. However, I can entirely see how this could be a very exciting record for the jazz fan seeking something rather different. It even manages to pull of the sax. Kinda. Anyway, not personally my cup of caffeinated beverage, but recommended nonetheless.

 

Will Howard