If, like me, you’re not a dedicated jazz listener, sometimes when you dip back in even the most straightforward playing can take your breath away. Go to a small jazz club in any city in any given week, and chances are you can find some unassuming musicians, from music students to over-70s who’ve been doing it their entire lives long, doing superhuman things. They might not be breaking any boundaries or going stir crazy, but however familiar or simple the material they’re jamming on might be, the feats of memory, dexterity and borderline telepathic interlocking with one another can be as far removed from ordinary human experience as elite sports.
Not that Skyjack are just a small-time club band. The Swiss / South African five-piece are comprised of musicians with impressive pedigrees, have played worldwide together and are now on their fourth album. But they are relatively straightforward. There’s nothing in their playing that screams 21st century, there’s no breaking out of rhythmic frameworks, there’s no electronics, production trickery or extended technique on instruments. Every track here broadly establishes a theme – usually a lyrically melodic one – then lets the players take turns soloing, builds up to a more or less intense peak, then plays out in a gentle coda.
So smoothly done is it that, especially during the most melodic passages, a casual listener might find it very familiar, even think of it as lounge background music. But the minute you zoom in on what they’re doing the playing really is dazzling – and most of all when the soloing dies down and you get a sense of how interlocked everything is. There’s some extraordinary geometry going on when they all sit back, which manages to suggest Philip Glass going Afrobeat – the miniature “Mantra for Reef” is a tantalising vision of what they could do if they made a more stripped-back, fully rhythm-focused project. Most of the album pushes sentimental themes to the front – the title track and “Surender Yourself to That Which Moves You” in particular glide into places of emotional intensity. But it’s the playing beneath those themes that is really worth your close focus.
Listen to "Let The Sky Open Under Your Feet" live:
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