Jeff Ballard trio
Time’s Tales
OKeh **** RECOMMENDED
Time’s Tales finds master drummer Ballard leading a supergroup in all but name, as he’s joined by the innovative Herbie Hancock guitarist Lionel Loueke, and the highly rhythmic Puerto Rico-born star alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón who has personality to burn here on complex joyous runs best glimpsed on Ballard’s tune ‘Beat Street’ or on the adaptation of Béla Bartók’s ‘44 Duos for Two Violins’ on ‘Dal, a Rhythm Song’ where Zenón is poignant and tender.
An adventure with plenty of heat Time’s Tales is sure proof that metrical wizardry and subdivisions made in drummer heaven need not interfere with the vitality of the music as music. Indeed the sheer quality of the interplay means the technical feats melt away and you can actually reach the emotion of the playing which is partly the point after all so that the music speaks to you. The album opens with a great reminder of Obliqsound-period Loueke with ‘Virgin Forest’ the title track of an early album of the Benin-born guitarist's where his legend as a leader first began to surface. And there are other surprises: perhaps you wouldn’t expect the inclusion of ‘The Man I Love’ yet it fits in well as the album approaches its mid-point with Zenón all heart-on-sleeve on the classic Gershwin ballad. The energy of grown-up teenagers at heart letting off a bit of steam surfaces in the trio’s take on the Queens of the Stone Age’s ‘Hangin’ Tree’, a bit of fun, but much more rewarding is the experimental ‘Free 3’ at the end (hinted at earlier on the brief ‘Free 1’), which has real edge and above all openness. An album with more than its fair share of tenderness, Zenón is on fire pulling off some of the most direct playing of his career, and Loueke utilises the soukous and Franco-influenced side of his sound to magical effect painting vivid expressionistic brushstrokes all over this fine record Ballard has also produced. Go to sleep tonight and dream that your local club has the artistic sense as well as the wherewithal to book this gifted trio.
Lionel Loueke top left, Jeff Ballard, and Miguel Zenón
Photo: Andrea Boccalini