A door opens and we hear a sound that we have never heard before, at least not in this form; grooves roll towards us like giant marbles spilling out of the dark tunnel of eternity into the small and manageable realm of the present. Everything is new and exciting - and yet familiar. There is Jamaaladeen Tacuma, the bass player, who on occasion in the past played far too many notes in far too short a time, but who was always bang on message when it counted. He is a harmolodicist par excellence, a bass player who can bring even the most abstract harmonies and rhythms back down to earth, and he is an urban witch-doctor who possesses the ability to synchronize the immutable givens of all human existence with spontaneous outpourings of boundless joie de vivre. And then there is David Murray, a combatant on the horn, every one of whose solos sounds like a manifesto of pure humanity; Murray, who unlike so many of his fellow musicians, does not content himself with blandly setting to music all that is wrong with society, whose sense of pride and dignity rules out all forms of accommodation; Murray, the musician of integrity whose social sensitivities have not been dulled by Facebook, and whose sound is still a physical experience, passionate and skeptical, capable of hurting or even offending. Loft Scene meets Harmolodics, Free Form goes Free Funk? That would be too simple. This sound is no hip crossover, crying out for new terminology. What we hear goes deeper than that. Both musicians venture into new terrain on this album - even with their social, historical, and artistic baggage wedged firmly under their arms. Instinctively leaving the balance of life to kick in behind them so that they can press on ahead, Tacuma remains Tacuma and Murray remains Murray. Yet Tacuma and Murray together is something else altogether, more than just the sum of its parts. Wolf Kampmann (from the sleeve notes) Rendez-vous (The Opening) - Hotel Le Prince (movement 1) - Theme on a Dream (movement 1) - Bring it On - How Sensitive - Theme on a Dream - 80's Downtown (movement 2) - Theme on a Dream - who's that ringing? (movement 3) - Hotel Le Prince (movement 2) - Yes We Can (feat. Amiri Baraka) - Rendez-vous (The Ending). Recorded February 4/5, 2009 at Studio Magnetica, Paris (amazon.com)
