The Steve Hunter Band
Dig My Garden
(Birdland Records)
by John McBeath
Rating: ****
Sydney composer/electric bassist Steve Hunter has released seven previous albums as leader and seen more than 90 of his compositions recorded.
His latest recording of eight varied originals is scaled down to quartet size with foremost sidemen: James Muller guitar; Matt McMahon keyboards, and drummer James Hauptmann.
Hunter spent most of 2004 living in Spain and several tracks reflect Spanish influences, especially Poema Del Bajo (Bass Poem), a satisfying two minute bass solo using Catalan references with guitar-like chords and fluency.
Styles range from the jazz rock fusion of Savvy with Muller’s wailing electric guitar, to the lyrical balladry of Three Rivers featuring melodic bass lines, flowing contemplative piano, and superbly tasteful acoustic guitar.
Cazador begins with relaxed out-of-tempo bass figures for a couple of choruses, moving into a fast rhythmic pattern for the piano to groove above, concluding with Muller’s incredibly swift inventions leading into a chaotic roller coaster crescendo of guitar and drums.
This review first appeared in The Weekend Australian and is republished with permission.
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The Steve Hunter Band
Dig My Garden
(Birdland Records)
By Greg Levine
Who doesn’t love a good metaphor? Literate or musical, stuff is more entertaining if it can refer to something else. Dig My Garden portrays a range of different landscapes. For a start, the title allows the listener to call up all sorts of horticultural references. In a general sense, it allows you to imagine you’re sitting in Steve Hunter’s back garden having a conversation about music. Somewhere in the inner west of Sydney, perhaps; a plain porch with a table and chairs, medium-sized trees up one side fence, herbs and flowers up the other. A studio up the back, the sound of invisible birds everywhere, a train line nearby and a neighbour next door who plays cocktail jazz CDs all the time but doesn’t realise Hunter’s a musician. It’s not Monet but it’s relaxing.
What do you need if you have gardening (or musical) ambitions? First thing: knowledge – “acumen”; “know-how”. A “green thumb”, so to speak. Or, as track one describes it, “Savvy”. Thus, the metaphor can work specifically. Take track five, Trellis. It sounds a little like a re-working of an old Hunter tune, but the new title seems more appropriate. The song is a trellis upon which the bass line creeps, vine-like. Later in the track Muller’s tropical (I was going to write “blistering” but I wanted to continue the botanical theme) solo pulls at the structure of the tune, trying to draw it into crescendo, but the trellis just stands firm despite whatever is buzzing around it.
Back to Savvy. The word introduces another theme which propagates itself throughout the album: Spain. The word “savvy” came to English from Spanish and while the song itself doesn’t sound very Spanish, the rest of the album is dominated by flamenco sounds. Track two, The Lemon Bird (more horticultural allusion), sprouts with a tap on the cajón and then a strum on the flamenco guitar. This type of sound has been popular in jazz over the years. Wayne Shorter’s recent version of Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 blooms bright, though the Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1963 version of the same tune has proved a hardy perennial. And, of course, Davis and Evans virtually defined the genus. As The Lemon Bird flies, Muller plants himself more on the de Lucia side of the patch than the McLaughlin.
The Andalusian theme continues with Cazador (Parts 1 to 3). Part 1 is a flamenco bass feature that demonstrates not only Hunter’s amazing technical facility but also a sensitive touch and a great ear. Flamenco is dominated by nylon-string guitar and percussion. It can’t be easy to cross-pollinate that sort of thing with a bass, an instrument usually considered unwieldy. But Cazador Part 1 shows it’s possible. It ends with some lush, verdant piano from McMahon, which gradually builds into something a bit more harried and intense: Part 2, battling the weeds. By Part 3 the weeds have refused to be subdued and reinforcements are needed. Muller and Hauptmann step in with the weed-wand like Coltrane and Jones, as Hunter and McMahon go and sit on the porch.
Even the timing of the release carries the echoes of metaphor. What better time to dig someone’s garden than the start of Spring? Even though this band is world class all year round, I believe the executives at Birdland Records could be onto something. Co-ordinating their releases with the seasons is an interesting strategy to cultivate. With this album as its root, I am sure it will bear fruit.
