Joe Morris: Age Of Everything

Age of Everything is an amazingly hot trio session from unsung guitar hero Joe Morris, whose style could be compared to that of Present Tense's Philip Gibbs or even a laid-back Stefan Dill—a sort of melodious Derek Bailey, really. The fragile sharded melodies are mere invocations dripping across the fettered brow of a bubbling Holland/DeJohnette-like pulse. Haughty dew-drop notes glisten in the rhythmic sward.

For over twenty years Morris' discordant approach has been founded in greatness. Coltrane's OM (Impulse!, 1965) was his first exposure to jazz and his style is true to the late saxophonist and yet contemporary in its context. There's also an Ornette Coleman-freeness about his approach. Morris may be the purest of John Coltrane's lineage today. The lolloping Coltrane-inspired froogy grooves (at the scale of wife Alice Coltrane's Monastic Trio) are sing-song and dense at the same time— harmolodic perhaps?

Huge ancient bass trunks rise up before us in ligneous cadence. Buzzing cymbaleers hover only a gnat's whisker above every sonic surface. You don't see it? Follow your ears, they know the way.

Now shafts of light penetrate the dense canopy, bouncing from the prismatic fret board of Morris' guitar; the bass tightens the pace and centers the melodic focus; cymbals screech from the treetops deriding a barking snare, the guitar prowls through the undergrowth, feline and deadly: pounces, bites, feeds. Jungle fever indeed, hot and wet. Prepare to get very sweaty with Age Of Everything.

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