CD Review: Daniel Lantz Trio Plays Bond.

Daniel Lantz (pno); Erik Ojala (bs); Daniel Olsson (dms) + Sani Gamedze (vcl); Roger Nordling (ten).
(Review by Lance).

The thought of listening to a CD of James Bond associated tunes filled me with horror.  I recalled that even the Basie Band's crack at 007 wasn't wonderful. Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey are the names I associate with these tunes. The blurb mentioned that Sani Gamedze had been influenced by Bassey so I buried my head in the sand and hoped it would go away!

It didn't and boy am I glad!

South African Gamedze bears as much resemblance to "Burly Chassis" as our cat does!

This lady has a great jazz-influenced voice (something Bassey could never be accused of) and she puts it to good effect on Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, Tomorrow Never Dies, A View to Kill, If There Was a Man and Nobody Does it Better. On the latter number, Sani's  up-tempo version indicates that nobody indeed does it better. Having said that, Carly Simon's original version was also pretty damn good but this...!

Roger Nordling, a Swedish tenor saxist and flautist, blows some exciting and  effective solos both on the vocal tracks and on the instrumentals.

Apologies to the Daniel Lantz Trio for concentrating on the guests. The trio is the major factor on the CD - it is, after all, their gig -  providing the structure for the guests to take off and to show that Swedish jazzmen can swing as much as they did back in the days of Gullin, Hallberg, Domnerus etc. 

Lantz is simply the perfect guy to comp or solo in any band. His playing, always sympathetic to his surroundings, contains such beautiful solos and with the trio everything gells.

I was both shaken (pleasantly) and stirred by this disc.
Daniel Lantz Trio Plays Bond was released on Do Music Records on Jan. 25.
Lance.