Jazz breaking news: Chris Dave’s Drumhedz get radical at Ronnie’s
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
It's easy to forget that ‘drums’ is a general term.
Each practitioner sets up his ‘traps’ in a personal way, and Chris Dave’s kit has an anatomy that instantly commands attention. Two crash cymbals look like futuristic totem poles, the brass shaped into thin vertical curls around a rod reaching high into the air. A pair of bongos is racked just above his kick and the floor tom is rigged with an echo-delay device that enables him to send the end of a phrase to the same outer space where dub sentinels Lee Perry and Max Romeo dispatched Satan many moons ago.
If Dave, the Texan prodigy who dazzled in Kenny Garrett’s quartet at this very venue in the early millennium and has latterly worked with anybody from Meshell Ndegeocello to José James, has gone state of the art with his equipment then the mission statement of his band has a nostalgic undertone. Dave calmly explains that he, guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, bass guitarist Nick McNack and tenor-soprano saxophonist Marcus Strickland are bringing to life the ‘record store experience’ whizzing from one classic tune to the next, which means that anthems by Coltrane, Herbie, Hendrix and Fela are all reprised with the nonchalance of players who can negotiate steeplechase chord changes and stark shifts of tempo as if they were a stroll in the park.
This live soul-blues-funk-rock-jazz-Afrobeat mixtape has the audience hyped but it is the flashes of old school hip-hop such as Mark The 45 King’s ‘900 Number’ that raise the loudest hollers. Other pieces present a wonderfully unholy blend of ballad and backbeat. With faultless composure the band throws Stevie Wonder’s serene ‘I Can’t Help It’ over a truly murky hip-hop groove with the two tunes seemingly in different keys before repeating the ruse in the encore. That time, Dave’s old boss, pianist Robert Glasper, en route to the Love Supreme festival, sits in to caress Ellington’s ‘In A Sentimental Mood’ over a hip-hop groove even murkier than the previous one. It was dance music, sex and romance, as Prince may not have imagined it.
– Kevin Le Gendre