Purists will curl a lip, but hell, Lorber writes some wicked grooves.
Then Stern’s trademark plaintive cry cuts in, and your nerves tingle. It’s not ground-breaking, but just in the quality of how it’s put together you can see why Lorber’s won Grammy awards in the past. Damn, it’s catchy as hell, and that’s before Lorber’s trademark electric piano sound cuts through the sweetness. But, what you notice, is your foot, tap-tap-tapping away. Righteous kicks off fairly inoffensively, with bright horns and staccato piano comping over which a nice, uncomplicated rhythm develops. This alchemist has helped created a potent mixture that across ten tracks rarely fails to excite and, like a Twix bar, has both a melodic crunch and a sweet groove-filled smoothness running right through it. It was, apparently, Haslip who was the catalyst for this particular alignment of the jazz stars, having recruited Stern on a number of Yellowjackets releases and himself having played on a number of Lorber albums. Others appearing on the album include drum legend Vinnie Colauita, Dave Mann on horns, Gary Novak on drums, Stern’s wife Leni Stern on n’goni, and Bob Francheshini on sax. His more complex melody making complements Lorber’s playing well.Īlso on this album are Dave Weckl, jazz fusion’s finest on the skins and cymbals who, when he plays, attracts drummers out of the woodwork from miles around to gawp at his technique and bassist Jimmy Haslip, founder member of fusion pioneers Yellowjackets who famously learned to play left-handed on an upside-down right-handed bass and in so doing, astounds and confuses bass players in equal measure whenever he plays. On it he’s teamed up with ex-Miles Davis Band member and all round six-string whizz Mike Stern, who sits in the small part of the jazz venn diagram where bebop, blues and rock overlap.
This album, Eleven, shows why fusing styles is always worth a go. If there were a Hall of Fame for funkin’ up the groove, he’d be in it. Jeff Lorber is the original gangster when it comes to jazz-funk-fusion and all the variations thereof (indeed, he’s been ‘accused’ of playing smooth jazz, as if it were a crime). (Concord Jazz Records. CD review by Rob Mallows)
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