Albare is an alias adopted by guitarist Albert Dadon. On the basis of this album his music is polite, not lacking melodically, and ultimately so inoffensive that it gives good taste a bad name. Everything (as far as I can hear) is polished to within an inch of its life and the surface sheen of the music, which thanks to the clinically efficient production is foregrounded throughout, underpins that tasteful inoffensiveness. The fact the drums were recorded on a different continent to everything else and were presumably phoned in is in indicative of the overall result.
In this instance a title like Feeling Moody hints at no kind of existential shading, but it does give the leader and Turcio the chance to lay down some smooth work, with emphasis on elongating the double o.
Lionel Cole’s one and only vocal contribution on I Believe is, according to note writer Joe Chindamo, in the tradition of the late Al Jarreau, a figure whose music I am entirely ignorant of. Any road up, he seems to lack interpretive depth and thus does nothing to disrupt proceedings, which soon move smoothly and seamlessly on to Ladino Jazz, where the drums are metronomic and the music ends randomly instead of at a point where improvisational fire and the conversational aspects afforded by four improvising musicians being present in the same room in the same moments have run their mutually agreed course.
In a way my patience had run its course by the time I’d mustered enough words for this review and the music left such a syrupy after-taste that it took a vinegary blast of Van Der Graaf Generator to restore some balance.
Discography
Missing In Action; MAD’s Happy Day; No Regrets; Feeling Moody; I Believe; Ladino Jazz; Sailing Away; Blue Bossa Reimagined; Hymn To My Friend; Hypothetical Retrospection (49.46)
Albare (g, v); Phil Turcio (p); Phil Rex (b); Pablo Bencid (d); Lionel Cole (v). Melbourne, Australia. Drums recorded in New York. No date(s).
Alfi Records 050423CD
