The Reddish Fetish: Llegué (F&F Records)
Indelible as it may be, the Louisiana delta doesn’t have a monopoly on a tradition of musical cross-breeding. South Florida spawned Latin music, southern rock and a slew of jazz artists including Fats Navarro, Cannonball Adderley and Archie Shepp, not to mention Jaco Pastorius. Pastorius was befriended by Bill Reddish, an eclectic bassist and composer from the 1960/70s. Reddish was the leader of fusion band The Reddish Fetish.
His son Jason has restored the band name and sort of music that his father played, a heartfelt gesture to a musician and band which were never captured on wax. The repertoire of Jason Reddish and his Jersey City All-Stars is distinguished for its lazy swamp groove, notably underlining Journey Into Satchi and Fusion Flower. The latter mixes gumbo with amphetamine, courtesy of Reddish’s sassy drums strokes and echo-laden, alienating trumpet.
The Reddish Fetish’s straightahead tunes are welcome breathers though marred by the cluttered pairing of piano and guitar. Sleeves – actually a stripped-down Greensleeves, the folk tune immortalised in jazz by the John Coltrane Quartet – is more convincing and has a hot and humid pulse all its own and thrives on collective improvisation, including melancholic violin. All-in all an enjoyable tribute.
David Occhipinti: Camera Lucida (Elastic Recordings ER 020)
Camera Obscura is a dark room. Camera Lucida is a light room and the title of Canadian guitarist David Occhipinti’s latest album. Food for thought. Is there any place left for the wondrous experience of creation when visibility reigns supreme? How do you adapt to a world of clear-cut answers and the absence of nuance?
From a musical standpoint, the answer may lie in a dive into the abyss of improvisation, a cause that should scare off adherents of the jazz-is-dead-opinion. Occhipinti follows a slightly differing path, striving for ego-less chamber (jazz) music, a method that involves organic mingling of voices. Occhipinti’s guitar has a great rapport with Aline Homzy’s violin, resulting in fluent back-and-forths in the staccato pieces Ice Dance and Octavia. Occhipinti’s post-modern baroque music is too nervy for my taste, with vibraphone, clarinet and bassoon chiming in, but there’s no mistaking that it’s strong enough to find an audience. Occhipinti strikes a good balance between salon and jazz room, climaxing with his snappy phrasing in Seurat-Cha-Cha.
Seurat was a painter who experimented with light within relatively strict formal boundaries. It doesn’t need a stretch of the imagination to realise that something of the Frenchman rubbed off on the Canadian, whose label, by the way, not only released Camera Lucida on CD but also on bright-blue vinyl.
