Fun. Can’t remember ever beginning a review with that three-letter classic.
It is. Slipped out quietly at the end of July – I found it on Bandcamp, although curiously it doesn’t seem to be available there at the moment apart from the listings and album cover. But it is on Spotify and available on vinyl.
This invigorating affair was captured during a series of performances at the Blue Note jazz club in New York in early November last year. Cory Wong produced, mixed and mastered the recording.
The line-up has Wong on guitar and Joshua Redman on tenor and soprano saxophones with Taylor Eigsti on Rhodes and keyboards, Kevin Gastonguay on organ and keyboards, Yohannes Tona on bass guitar and Petar Janjic on drums.
Most of the tunes are Wong’s, with co-writes in the selections too involving Eigsti and others.
Apparently Wong specifically wrote all-new material exclusively for this residency, which ran from 4–9 November. I wonder if there is still more material from the residency to be released in the future.
The two-keyboard setup of Eigsti on Rhodes and Gastonguay on organ gives the album a firm retro 1970s jazz-funk texture, so if you are a Vulfpeck fan and not so much a jazz one, it’s far more jazzy than what Vulfpeck do.
The whole album is streaming on YouTube – the excitement of the audience adds a good deal to the sense of belonging the storming and even at times tender performance engenders – and I’d thoroughly recommend all this “randomness” that lands faraway from throwaway casual.
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