Toby Wren dishes up 13 original compositions on his latest album umlaut, transcended by impressive performances, featuring a post-modernist approach to the acoustic jazz trio style.
Each track seems like a masterpiece piece in its own right, leaving the listener wondering what to expect next. Especially at track 13 umulaut, which unleashes a flurry of musical ideas, driven at high tempo, that takes off into journey of interaction and dialogue between each instrument.
This interaction is even comical and playful at times, providing a sense of larakinism that is so often a unique characteristic heard in Australian Jazz.
The musical influences however, are difficult to define with such a range of techniques and sounds incorporated. There are contemporary elements of Scofield, McLaughlin, Grigorian, while also considerable evidence of the jazz-blues masters like Montgomery, Christian and Green.
Read the rest of Jim Budd’s review on the Jazz Queensland website.
