ARP

Ensemble – Live Mexican suMMer

Your vibrant cosmic synth-jazz odyssey awaits.

as Arp, New York’s Alexis Georgopoulos’ 2018 release Zebra demonstrated a happy knack of pulling together strands of funk, down-tempo jazz, ambient minimalism and radiant electronica to form an immersive and rather pleasant chill-out album. By taking that mix of signature sounds as well as a couple of pieces from Zebra into a live setting, it’s proved to be a successful and highly engaging experiment. With saxophonist David Lackner’s yearning, expressive sax, trilling analogue synths, spacey cascades of plangent electric piano, absorbing elastic bass, drifting cymbals and a verdant undergrowth of tuned and mallet percussion, the overall project possesses a humid exoticism. In this environment the jazzy inflections that were hinted at on Zebra are given a fuller voice that brings to mind the early electric modal explorations of Joe Henderson, Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul, et al. Though still a calm space, the interactions of the group, the ensemble of the title, lend pieces like Eos and the Jon Hasselllike Fourth World constructions of Voices and Ozu a welcome backbone to something that might otherwise be rather too supine for its own good. SS