Michael Formanek Elusion Quartet: Time Like This

A brilliant double-bassist with what often sounds like Mingus roots, and a variously spiky and gracefully contemplative composer with an alertness to the spaces and suggestions on which improvisers thrive, the California-raised downtown New Yorker Michael Formanek has spent over 25 years unveiling new personal angles on the brusque, rhythmically devious techniques often associated with his sometime partner Tim Berne. In his classy and technically sophisticated Elusion Quartet, Formanek has made emotional immediacy a priority, without blunting his signature cutting-edge. There’s a glassily mysterious atmosphere to the opening ‘Down 8 Up 5’, in which the formula suggested by the title is observed in the excellent Kris Davis’ steadily-tapped treble-piano intro and the cymbal swishes and double-bass throbs that hover around it, and sympathetically but robustly departed from in Tony Malaby’s smoky tenor solo and Ches Smith’s gleaming vibes break. ‘Culture of None’ is very Berne-like – notably in its strutty sax/piano finale – and ‘A Fine Mess’ reflects the opposing qualities in its title by being loose and collectively-searching, but also tranquil and graceful, particularly in Davis’ precise and crystalline piano solo Scurrying pizzicato bass figures, saxophone pad-flappings, and brittle ensemble exchanges turn to soulful meditations (‘This May Get Ugly’ and ‘The Soul Goodbye’), the teasing tune and ambiguous groove of ‘That Was Then’ spurs a lissome, deep-warbling solo from Malaby. The Elusion Quartet play uncompromising contemporary jazz to exacting standards, but the results are remarkably warm.

from www.jazzwise.com