Dave Douglas: Gifts
Author: Andy Robson
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Dave Douglas (t) |
Label: |
Greenleaf Music |
Magazine Review Date: |
May/2024 |
Media Format: |
CD, LP, DL |
Catalogue Number: |
GRE-CD 1108 |
RecordDate: |
Rec. 23 December 2023 |
Despite run-outs with luminaries like Lage and Halvorson, Douglas isn’t best known for collaborating with guitarists, and certainly none has contributed so much to the mood and structures of a Douglas release as Bhatia does here.
Bhatia and Chang are long-time chums from the rock band Son Lux and they bring a roar and rawness to
And to this end the album’s compassionate but emotional soul is a four-song sequence of Billy Strayhorn songs. ‘Take the A Train’ is a stunning re-working, with an echo of Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’ in Bhatia’s chordings. Lewis’ tenor is absent from the other 3 songs, but if ‘Rain Check’ is nakedly danceable, it all changes, inevitably, with ‘Blood Count’. It begins admirably straight-ahead, but Bhatia’s textures and distorted stabs heave Douglas aside until the maelstrom is resolved (or flatlines?) with one sustained note from the returning horn.
It’s fascinating to compare Ian Shaw’s treatment of similar material on
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