Clark Sommers
(bass); Geof Bradfield, (tenor/sop sax/ clarinet); Chris Madsen (tenor sax);
Matt Gold, (guitar); Dana Hall; (drums).
This is an absolutely stonking group playing high energy jazz, dragging in influences from a variety of sources and trampling clichés in the dust. Sommers is the composer of all the music but this is a band album, though it’s hard to believe, after listening to the first track Also Tomorrow, that this isn’t a drummer led band. The front line ranges from wild to subtle but overwhelming it all is a man at the back driving in piles for a tower block or taking furniture apart with a large hammer. And it’s all rather joyful in many places.
Second
track, James Marshall, is a tribute
to Mr Hendrix. Gold’s guitar echoes and suggests some of Jimi’s lines but he
develops these hints and makes them his own. Dana Hall continues dropping bombs
and blowing things up at the back. By now you will have noticed that Sommers is
the anchor, holding everything together for the others to do their things. This
is not to suggest that he is simply playing rhythms or vamping - he is a master
of long fluid runs, stops and changes of direction.
Ancient Voices is
the breather, an elegant flowing lament that pushes the bass to the front.
Hall’s cymbals provide the backwash for dancing, intertwined guitar and
clarinet. Sommers talks about jazz being conversational and the album title
comes from a belief that we all need each other. He combines those two ideas
beautifully here.
Why
the next track is called Silent Observer is
anybody’s guess. It opens as a driving drums/bass/sax trio before the others
join in and it’s everybody’s rodeo. You can imagine wide grins all round and
the body language, urging each other on, as they were recording this one. Skin And Bone, which follows is a brief,
but intense, diversion into free jazz but with an ancient feel as if music is
first being explored and the only instruments are skin and bone.
Weeks & Weeks
is another tribute, this time to Willie Weeks who played with everyone in the
70s and 80s and is still going strong. Sommers seems to have captured the best
in every soul music instrumental break from that period. It is a mellow, late
night jam, with the horns playing in harmony throughout but the fractured
rhythm stops it sliding into Sanborn/Washington Jr territory.
Nichols on the Quarter is preceded by a short bass solo before it moves
off in a mellow mood with only Hill’s galloping around the drum kit promising
something more lively to come. There’s solos in turn from clarinet and guitar
before the saxes give it a more widescreen feeling and turn up the energy
levels.
The
title track Intertwine, closes the
album. It is more delicate, contemplative, philosophical than what has gone
before; an opportunity to reflect on the last two years. Sommers showcases his
bass in a long solo playing over subdued contributions from Gold and Hall again
covers the kit before the saxes, exchanging squabbling solos, join again to
take us home.
It’s
worth awarding points to the production on the album which is probably by Ken
Christiansen (it’s not clear). The music is beautifully recorded with clear
separation between the instruments. That you don’t always get this makes it
worthy of comment.
I
can’t help feeling that the name of the group, Clark Sommers Lens, is missing
an apostrophe somewhere along the way, although that is the only problem with
this album.
The album is released today, September 16 and there is more about Clark Sommers and this group at his website HERE - Dave Sayer
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