Tomas Fujiwara's on a Triple Double

Tomas Fujiwara's Triple Double is Fujiwara and fellow drummer, Gerald Cleaver, guitarists Mary Halvorson and Brandon Seabrook, and trumpet/cornet players Ralph Alessi and Taylor Ho Bynum. This resolves my confusion over the tag line on the promo, it's a "Triple Double" album. Not an album constituted from as many as six discs. That minor distraction is resolved when the music comes in, the sound streams, alive and kicking or should that be trumpet playing, skins stroking and melody searching together. 

 

The title "March" - is it the Month? Is it the step? Is it the process? Nevermind. This LP races and swings, travels and pauses, breaths fast and anxious, it paces, and the trumpet never gives up, never allows itself to be dominated. It's very much the trumpet that makes it, drives it. It's only at the end in the music's embers, the interplay, the cross pollination strides through. Ears perk up, brain clicks in, and ideas spark, and fizz as the music grows, first drum roll driven.

 

There's an often gorgeously measured and discordant battle of bass and guitar setting the pace as the Trumpet asserts leadership and authority, holding those discordant elements, but the jarring jamming organ gives a great feel, passages that drift in like thrift store detritus, like a long distance view, but the constant changes keep these ears and brain alive to possibility, this is an LP that rewards several listens and the listener needs to invest time time, effort, commitment, and passion, but it's time well spent.

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Essential Info
Main image, Tomas Fujiwara by Brian Cohen
Tomas Fujiwara's website is here

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