SENSIBLE SHOES

Third British quintet album "Sensible Shoes" is possibly one of the most interesting post jazz-rock releases of 2009. They are playing electric jazz rock with two alto saxes, electric bass, heavy drumming and Fender Rhodes passages. The music is combination of jazz improvisation and complexity with rock energy.

Having their roots in Ornette Coleman and John Zorn music, mixing it with progressive rock and some dose of psychedelia, the band is playing one of most interesting jazz-rock you can imagine in the end of first decade of new century. Very recommended for jazz- rock lovers searching for complex but accessible new sounds. Not less than 4,5.

Some very tasty and interesting progressive jazz, especially for the first few (dozen) listens, but once you've heard it enough times that it has been memorized, I find that the two softer songs - Water Shortage and Early Morning - stand out above all the others. Those two are exceptionally beautiful, and both are exemplary cases of build-ups in music; they both (and this is a trait that is also found to a lesser extent in other songs on the album) gradually reach states of near-insanity-like layering, where the individual instruments don't QUITE seem to fit together, and yet in not fitting together perfectly they fit together...perfectly! Such is an enigma I can handle in my avant-jazz.