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Supergenerous
Supergenerous
I know the label says Blue Note, and that Supergenerous colleagues Kevin Breit and Cyro Baptista met during a session for sultry songstress Cassandra Wilson, but there’s few jazz critics or listeners that would find any easy, identifialble idioms to make an association. Especially when Wilson guests for one of the oddest readings of the old cowboy lament “Home On The Range,” skewered by a detuned banjo and various shakers and hand drums. Or the Delta/cosmic blues version of “Love Is All Around” (the theme from the “Mary Tyler Moore Show”) that keeps spiraling towards Venus. In fact, most of the music from Brazilian percussionist Baptista and Canadian guitarist Breit has that restrained-but-otherworldly property that creeps into Ry Cooder’s enigmatic soundtracks or Latin Playboys’ bohunk improvs. While Breit conjures some unusual sequence with a mandolin-like stringed instrument, Baptista adds a gourd or rattle or an oud, or all at once, if only to taking the natural resonance of the sound that much farther from reality. Tasteful choices with miniscule flashes of intensity, but with a gentlemen’s agreement not to sound like anybody else, Supergenerous are low-key compliment to the spate of “new free” and “groove jazz” ensembles that secretly wish they could be as resourceful and outside as this pair. Exceptionally exciting. –virginia reed (Blue Note)
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