First up, Musically Adrift by Samuel Purdey on Tummy Touch records. You can stream it on the label's website, as I did. Originally recorded in the mid-90's (and re-released with attention to detail and commodity fetishism) by a Brighton duo, neither of whom are called Samuel or Purdey, I was rooting for this record but it didn't quite take off for me (in any sense of the phrase). Playing on the record is Elliot Randall-well known to dan cognoscenti-, Neil Cowley (a british jazzer woh's well -regarded, I unsderstand), someone called Frank Floyd (who played on Gaucho and The Nightfly-but not well known to those in the know, I'd argue.) And this gives it away - the original bassist from Jamiroquai. I don't want to fall into knee-jerkism - Heaven forfend!- but the jazz-funkiness of it all left me lukewarm. AOR Jazz - Delicious hot, unappetising lukewarm.
I listened to my next album for the first time today. The Mark Masters Ensemble - Everything You Did. It's 10 jazz reworkings of Steely Dan numbers, some like Charlie Freak and Showbiz Kids unlikely candidates for a jazz makeover. I downloaded it so listened without a track listing at hand. I recognised the 3rd one as Do It Again, as the melody is played pretty straight. The first 2 , no idea. Even now as the version of Showbiz Kids is on the computer in the background, and I know what it's supposed to be, I don't get it. Black Cow, with a supper club vocal, was obvious, and I liked the (possibly perverse) way Aja (possibly the most jazzy Dan tune in some senses ) was truncated to 3 minutes 24. Chain Lightning is played straight for 11 an a half minutes and gets a bit dull...and then I found this review on the site All About Jazz by Jeff Dayton-Johnson "It's a mark of the band's characteristically sloppy multi-layered ironies that they seemed to parody smooth jazz even as they genuinely dug playing the smooth jazz. So a jazz treatment of their music could be more tricky than it first appears,especially for a serious guy like Masters." This helped me "get it." It's the proper jazzers revenge. Nice? Not nice. That said, the big-band sound, the tasty charts, the chops - mmm, nice. Jeff concludes, "He makes no concession to the original sound of the songs." If he and the band are using the originals to spring off in time honoured fashion, then that's groovy. If it's passive-aggressive in a straight from the fridge style, then that's a stone drag.
Thirdly, Ed Motta's 2013 album AOR. Now, according to the Wiki- Oracle Ed has played with Roy Ayers, 4 Hero, Seu Jorge, Icognito, Bo Diddley, Ryuichi Sakamoto and translated Phil Collins' lyrics for Tarzan into Portuguese. Respect. The album is - colours on mast here- the best of the three. It's termed a tribute to the aor of the Doobies, Hall and Oates, Steely Dan but is almost chromosomatically Becker and Fagen. The electric piano, the lazy horns, the loose but tight drumming is all there. It's languid and bittersweet. It comes from a place of love without judgement, unconditional. It's smart but not condescending. It does not seek to improve or comment on, but to flatter by floating between imitating and intimating. Haver a listen. the album comes in English and Portuguese. Both are great.
