These JAZZ NERDS, am I right guys?
They’re the best. I don’t even know how we get by without them anymore –
they’re the ones who stir the pot, get everybody all hot and bothered out here
in the summertime (well, by the time you read this, it will be almost
Thanksgiving). They’re the ones who remind us of the virtues of the ice cream
cone stack. They’re the ones who are as COOL as COOL can be.
OK, maybe the all-caps “JAZZ NERDS” was
a little harsh, but I was whipped up into a frenzy by this drums/sax duo from
Charlottesville, Virginia. That’s on me, though – I’m easily agitated. And that’s
also Travis Thatcher and Steve Snider for you: not afraid to cook the room till
it boils.
“Save Yrself” was first, and it set the
tone. Sometimes cacophonous, always rigorous, it bleats and crashes in the
right moments, swings and jives in the right moments, falls apart, coalesces,
gallops, bloats, and bursts at the right moments. They’re all right moments,
get me? One after another, right moment after right moment, seemingly bubbling
effortlessly from these two. Like gas from a vent. It’s an unending pleasure.
And then there was “Exponential Bummer,”
existentialism extrapolated till it meant little, then less. The energy is
equaled; is it more exploratory, more experimental? Is it actualized, realized,
achieved? Am I just typing to hear myself type? Let’s just say there’s a track
on here called “Mindfulnesslessness,” which basically doesn’t answer any question
it asks itself and essentially exists just to hear itself exist. But, like, in
a really pumped-up jazz kind of way – with flanger!
Any fan of anything on Astral Spirits
will dig this duo big time. Seek em out.
--Ryan
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