Frenchman Sylvain Daniel is a pop and jazz musician, a designation that might suggest entirely separate activities. His latest album is by turns relentlessly metronomic and heavily laden but melodious, a result not unexpected from a basic quintet that calls on a variety of electronic keys as well as a solo trumpet, flugelhorn and, in one instance, alto sax.
Compared with Miles Davis floating above the arrangements of Gil Evans, Aymeric Avice’s horn set atop Daniel’s tumultuous goings-on is little less than storm-tossed and heroic, not unlike what MD did over funk in later years.
There are surprises: among the guests is vocalist Benjamin Epps, whose rapping French on Le Monde Est À Nous is a delight. The uncredited vocal on the lovely ballad Say Goodbye is no less magical than Daniel’s reduction of his powerhouse in the same chart to the relative acoustic calm of trumpet, bass (himself), piano (Bruno Ruder) and light synths (Arnaud Roulin). Something similar occurs in Old Fashioned, a classic example of where the insistent drumbeat is unnecessary and might even suggest the departure of the drummer and his replacement by some non-human mechanism. Melancholia is true to itself, its forces on a short rein for horn and keyboard to dwell on a louring sentiment.
That drumbeat monotony links the charts with not so much a thread as a rope. But Daniel, who also performs, inter alia, on percussion, keys and flugelhorn as well as singing, exerts reasonable control over what could have been unwieldy forces. SlyDee is nonetheless a mixture, with as much dancefloor superficiality as genuine musical depth.
Discography
(1) Fresh Start; Soulkraft; No Sex In Verneuil; Resistance; (2) Le Monde Est À Nous; (1) Paisley Rules; Interlude 1; Say Goodbye; Melancholia; Bossa Champi; (3) My Discomelo; (4) Psalmocracy; (1) Interlude 2; Old Fashioned (54.49)
(1) Daniel (b, v, pc, kyb, flh) ; Aymeric Avice (t, flh); Bruno Ruder (p, kyb); Arnaud Roulin (syn); Vincent Taeger (d).
(2) as (1) but add Benjamin Epps (v).
(3) as (1) but add Thomas de Pourquery (as).
(4) as (1) but add Supérette (v).
Autre Distribution KR-2623
