snobb American trumpeter / multi-instrumentalist Rob Mazurek is a significant figure on the US contemporary jazz scene, and a prolific recording artist as well. He has offered a lot of unusual cross-genre musical experiments, mixing jazz with electronics and free improvs, adding Latin rhythms to bold techno, etc.

The main problem with Mazurek's music is that he often offers some interesting ideas and songs, but then mixing them with lots of raw material and less attractive pieces, sometimes just fillers. Almost any of his album would be best served with some editing. "Father's Wing", dedicated to his late father, is a rare exemption, really for the good.

Recorded with the excellent multi-national quartet of American drummer Chad Taylor, Canadian pianist Kris Davis and Norwegian acoustic bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (it's already this quartet's second album, after 2019's "Desert Encrypts Vol. 1"), it contains much better organized, executed and, what is really important, - composed music. Mazurek himself plays piccolo trumpet and adds lots of analog synth sounds.

The album's music is airy, almost minimalistic, with many beautiful tunes and complex, but quite ascetic arrangements. This release is worth hearing just for its almost 13-minutes long opener, "Crimson Song". Flying melody, full of optimism, played by the trumpeter over tasteful synth loops and framing rhythms of the drummer and pianist. This will stay in the listener's head for hours, or even days ahead. More rhythmic pieces, such as "Amber Wing" or "Spooled" are knotty, but don't destroy the beauty of the opener at all.

Coming after "Sun Ohm 3", is a ballad, but without even a trace of melancholy. "From Here To There" and "Sun Ohm 1" and the short "Signal Frame" are all more energetic, but still blessed with melodic snippets and varying complex rhythms. "Father’s Wing" is another of the album's beauty, sensual piano-based ballad, full of sunlight. "Ice Castles of Saturn", the closer, is a true free jazz piece, still quite bright and meditative, perfectly framing all of the album's conceptual music.

"Father's Wing" is Rob Mazurek at his best, in some of the best company he has ever had.

kev rowland OCTET SKULL SESSIONS CUNEIFORM Cornetist, composer, and conceptualist Rob Mazurek first learned the foundations of improvised music while studying jazz theory and practice with David Bloom at the Bloom School of Jazz in Chicago, and first came to prominence when he formed the Chicago Underground Collective (which ranges in size from duo, trio and quartet to full orchestra depending on what is required and has been going for well over 15 years). He has also worked with more mainstream acts such as Sterolab and Tortoise and has worked on more than 40 albums. This is the first album by the octet and is a combination of some composition and a great deal of inmprovisation in an incredibly charged atmosphere. While often in jazz there is one solist at the time, with the rest providing the support, that is not really the case here as what we have is everyone soloing at the same time, but somehow keeping together providing a direction.

The personnel for this album, along with Rob, was drummer John Herndon, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, flutist Nicole Mitchell, Guilherme Granado on keyboards and electronics, Carlos Issa on guitar and electronics, Mauricio Takara on percussion and cavaquinho (Brazilian ukulele), and Thomas Rohrer on C melody saxophone and rabeca (a rustic Brazilian viola associated with the northeast). It sounds as if Zappa at his most eclectic is having a battle with Miles which results in the sonic equiavalent of a massive thunderstorm. This music is incredibly charged, and one can visualise the lightning passing between players as new ideas spark yet another onsluaght of notes and a different direction.

Mazruek describes the approach as “personalities blending sound ideas that have the potential to expand or contract at any given moment in order to find the hidden spaces that must exist for the elevation and understanding of the origin of where we possibly come from and where we might be going.” Complex and complicated, hard to listen to, this is music that is driving exploration into new areas of jazz that leave the listener drained by the end. www.cuneiformrecords.com