A preparatory listen to Low period Bowie will make you realise quickly enough how fresh Dylan Howe’s reworkings of the material are. This isn’t jazzed Bowie in a typical sense. Known for some promising albums grounded in the Blue Note sound (The Way I Hear It [2003],This Is It, and the two Translation albums [2006-2007]), and as a rock drummer with Wilko Johnson, Howe’s latest album opens with ‘Subterraneans’ from Low moody and inviting, saxophonist Brandon Allen adding noir-ish touches, Howe’s arrangement allowing the music to float along with Mark Hodgson’s full bass sound the rock on which the music is founded. The bassist known for his work with Julian Joseph plays a pivotal part throughout.
Howe within the band sound himself operates a bit like the way Bobby Previte chooses to cast himself, again another jazz drummer at ease with rock rhythms. With material also spanning Heroes, two of the albums of the Berlin trilogy to draw on, the other tunes here are ‘Weeping Wall’ (Low), ‘All Saints’ (a Low out-take), ‘Some Are’ (Low), ‘Neuköln – Night’ (Neuköln is on Heroes), ‘Art Decade’ (Low), ‘Warszawa’ (Low here with Portishead’s Adrian Utley guesting), ‘Neuköln – Day’, and ‘Moss Garden’ (Heroes), the Bowie-Eno material radically transformed via Howe’s arrangements.
Clearly a jazz album built painstakingly from the ground up via Blakey hard bop (not 70s-style jazz-rock fusion incidentally), it’s a tiny pity and nothing to do with the music that the booklet artwork beautiful though it is misspells Wiggy’s name but I’m sure Julian Siegel will quickly forgive Howe the slip.
Howe’s dad Steve Howe from prog heroes Yes plays koto on the wonderfully cleansing final track ‘Moss Garden’ done as a piano/koto/drums trio and there are some lovely even moving moments say at the beginning of ‘All Saints’ that after a gorgeous bass opening from Hodgson switches from the woozily anthemic to driving Coltranian passages, Allen showing his considerable pedigree as a classic stylist.
A labour of love six years in the making and funded by backers who signed up to Howe’s Kickstarter campaign this is a breath of fresh air with a good deal of imagination involved all round. Ross Stanley’s brittle pianism (he vaults forward on ‘Warszawa’ in one of his best features) is just right in context and there is huge detail in the arrangements, lots of involving clearly denoted sections, cinematic tempo changes, a range of atmospheres, aided by creative use of studio technology.
You don’t need to be a Bowie buff (or even a Philip Glass one) to appreciate the album although it does no harm, as Subterranean works as a forum for improvising rather than attempting an arty statement or worse falling between the two stools of jazz and rock.
The conversational improvisational aspect that is vital to any good jazz album is retained and there is significant room for the saxophonists to stretch out, Howe in Blakey mode on ‘Warszawa’. Among the best jazz albums to my knowledge so far this year.
Stephen Graham
Released on 7 July