USA: Dave King Trucking Company – Surrounded By the Night (Sunnyside Records 2016)

Celebrated drummer Dave King (Happy Apple, The Bad Plus) bonds fellow Minnesota jazz musicians with like-minded New York artists on the Trucking Company’s third release. His drums are constructed with bamboo and other woodgrain materials, which is a novel engineering process by the Milwaukee- based outfit Rat Rod drums. King’s resonating sound envelops his fluid and punchy timekeeping prowess. And while the album’s running time hovers near LP territory at around 36-minutes, the band makes full use of it with a mélange of disparate works, designed with a continuum of zesty song-forms and passionate exchanges.
World-renown saxophonist, clarinetist Chris Speed’s somewhat patented, lilting clarinet lines add a buoyant outlook to several movements, yet King and bassist Chris Morrisey generate the high-impact goods on budding pieces such as “Parallel Sister Attack,” paving a route for the frontline’s climactic attack. Otherwise, the program contains thorny progressive jazz frameworks along with bop, swing, rock and other genres amid intermittent exoduses into the free zone.Sunnyside Records