PUNK JAZZ SYMPHONY

Admittedly, I have been quite looking forward to listening to, and reviewing this album for quite some time. From the name of the album itself, it presented a very interesting mixture of styles that I could only wonder how French artist Sébastien Gramond would put it all together. 'Punk Jazz Symphony' sounds on its own like a marriage of disparate styles that I could only imagine would sound fresh and unique to me. Although the sound here may not be as new or exciting as I first hoped it would be, 'Punk Jazz Symphony' does work out to be a rather charming piece of extended jazz music, with the occasional symphonic homage here and there to keep things lively.

While the name of the album may suggest some great diversity, this is something that an experienced listener to the work of Sébastien Gramond will have expected already. Here, the listener begins listening to jazz, but by the end of the record, the sound has developed into a form of progressive hard rock, stopping by here and there to dive into other sounds, most notably a sombre classical ambient piece towards the latter half of 'Thursday The Twelth'. No doubt, the highlight of the album here is the final track 'The Day After', which cycles through a wide range of instruments over the course of twenty minutes. Interplay between violins and bluesy guitar soloing isn't something one hears every day, and while it works here, it does feel as if the sound is never full realized in its potential.

Something that really surprised me is that I never noticed much of a punk sound here. The closest it comes to is a sort of bluesy hard rock, but that is nothing new for Sébastien Gramond. Perhaps if Gramond releases a purely punk album in the future, it will work out as well as I was thinking it would with 'Punk Jazz Symphony'.