Dawn of the Year of the Feelgood Guitar Chord
Guitarist Hans Luchs hails from Chicago. If you are into Nick Costley-White you will be in the zone. Luchs gigs around New York.
An album of his originals, Luchs has been around the scene for a bit.
But with the best will in the world he isn’t that known.
Mike King I’ve heard live in London play in duo with rewardingly maverick MC/drummer Kassa Overall. He’s like a young Herbie. But Simón Willson on bass who I haven’t heard live I know only from a few bit parts on records. Clearly he’s the finished article. He also gigs with Ethan Iverson.
Willson reminds me of the sound of Will Sach a bit, a bassist on the London scene. What the Chile born jazzer does on The Spell Is Broken makes all the difference under the hood for the whole sound.
If you hate the idea of tunes that make sense look away now
As an educator Luchs teaches at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. He has degrees from the University of Illinois-Chicago and DePaul.
Nothing palls. It’s fairly melodious. So if you hate the idea of tunes – and we know some listeners do – look away now. But is it too tuneful?
Hmmm. Fair question. Actually no is an answer. Tweeness which is the fault line when that happens does not get a look in.
Numbers alternate between quartet and quintet formulations
There’s a positivity in ‘Azizam’ where Luchs’ finger strokes lurch and linger, surge and tumble as the saxist Daniel Berkey takes on the tune. When the tenorist, who really sells the record initially with his Joshua Redman-like approach and his naive optimism is a win, drops out nevertheless it’s a more interesting record. That is, reader, if you are the sort of listener just like me who just wants to listen to rhythm sections.
All tunes are under six minutes. There is a lot of content in each. Where’s the improvising? If you mean long winded spontaneous composition or passages that don’t connect with anything that has gone before, guvnor you’ll still be looking long after you scroll away from reading this. But if you mean improvising in the sense of the sound of jazz, loose enough to harness freedom, strict enough to respect the language then it’s here.
Fake jazz this ain’t
It’s a studio album made in Brooklyn in the autumn of 2023 I’d pick out ‘Incongruent Thoughts’ as the freshest of all the tracks. It’s quiet, it steals up on you, all the players are lost in the music – Willson’s song comes out of nowhere in other words it’s not forced but is organic in the context. The drummer on the record by the way is Adam Arruda and he’s best heard on the grooviest track which is, tilting towards a boogaloo, ‘Hang Hostage’ but this album full of deft modulation, thoughtful composition and more isn’t at all about like what Joe South sang about in the 1960s ”the games people now, Every night and every day now, Never meanin’ what they say now, Never sayin’ what they mean” as there’s a deep immersion in pristine chordal exactitude and it’s more a build up of incremental chordal flow and the eventual finding of an outlet. In other words it’s not posing or playing what you don’t feel. The title track is led off by an expansive King joined by Luchs.
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