1939 Ensemble - Black Diamond Pearl [CD]

Black Diamond Pearl is a journey, cinematic in nature and ranging the full spectrum of emotion. The album opens up with Ryder, a puckish romp in vivid colors, a bright trumpet peppering the ebullient rhythms. Some of the more percussion-heavy songs are exercises in tom work, and you can imagine McQueen in Bullitt blasting these high octane tracks as he races up and over impossibly steep San Francisco streets in his \'68 GT. Vintage California pervades such songs, even in the way a rhythm might unravel at the end like a sunset dissolving into the Pacific. At other times, the drum language is subtler, and newly wrought space is filled with penetrating brass, etherial vocals (provided by Like A Villian¬s Holland Andrews), and industrial noise. A sense of impending catastrophe might arise in the shudders and booms, or a glimmering melody will give way to something darker--the hi-hat, steam drifting over seedy streets of some urban dystopia, the lonely trumpet, a monologue of discontent.

• Format Detail: CD
• Format: CD
• Label: Fire Records
• Genre: Jazz