Like their groundbreaking seventies recordings, the second studio effort by the regrouped Brecker Brothers is very much of its time. However, given the rate of development in jazz in the intervening years and the brothers’ evident susceptibility to today’s retrospective tendencies, it doesn’t sound anywhere near so original. Leaving aside for the moment the undiminished superiority of the brothers’ improvising abilities, Out Of The Loop’s ordinariness is apparent in two things: on the one hand there’s the pervasive use of the old-hat hip-hop drum loops and other techno effects in such as Slang and Scrunch, on the other a cool aesthetic redolent of eighties Miles Davis.
Nonetheless, everything is beautifully crafted (especial honours in this respect to the embellishments of guitarist Dean Brown, a player who had seemed to disappear without trace in the early eighties) and, as Harpoon shows, the solo work, while less extensive than in the seventies, is no less accomplished.
Jazz Door’s 1992 Live album, with its ferocious attack, dense textures and extended soloing, comes closer to the group’s seventies style. It helps that three numbers – Some Skunk Funk, Sponge (not Spunch) and NY Special (actually Randy’s Inside Out) are seventies classics. Hearing these again makes one think that in compositional terms the first edition of the band was the most substantial, but on the soloing front both brothers, especially Mike, have improved even on their seventies brilliance. The sound, courtesy perhaps of naughtily purloined mixing desk DATs, is excellent, but despite the ‘NYC, September 1992’ tag, Randy’s French announcement at the close of Song For Barry suggests input from other parts.
Discography
Out Of The Loop
Slang; Evocations; Scrunch; Secret Heart; African Skies; When It Was; Harpoon; The Nightwalker; And Then She Wept (54.52)
Michael Brecker (ts, Akai EWI, ss); Randy Brecker (t, flh); George Whitty (kyb, p); Maz Kessler, Robbie Kilgore (kyb); Eliane Elias (kyb, v); Dean Brown, Larry Saltzman, Robbie Kilgore (elg); James Genus (b, elb); Armand Sabal-Lecco (b, elb, v); Steve Jordan, Shawn Pelton, Rodney Holmes (d); Steve Thornton (pc); Mark Ledford (v); Chris Botti, Andy Snitzer (programming). NYC, c. 1994.
(GRP 97842)
Live
Some Skunk Funk; Common Ground; Spunch (sic); Song For Barry; Spherical; NY Special (71.30)
Michael Brecker (ts); Randy Brecker (t); Mike Stern (elg); George Whitty (kyb); James Genus (elb); Dennis Chambers (d). NYC, September 1992.
(Jazz Door 1248)
