Matt Lavelle Quartet - Matt Lavelle Quartet (2017)

Esoteric Egyptologists remind us that hieroglyphics are not simply a primitive form of writing, but rather contain an entirely higher form of resonant meaning. Schwaller de Lubicz said, "Each heiroglyphic can have an arrested, conventional meaning for common usage, but it includes all the ideas that can be connected to it as well as the possibility of personal comprehension." This I think, is the essence of Matt Lavelle's music. Fear Has Got to Go is a case in point.

On hearing Lavelle's music for the first time the listener is enveloped in a sense of a deep story told, even before any intellectual grasp of where the music is going. This reminds us that T.S. Elliot said that true poetry can communicate before it is understood. That is not to say Lavelle's melodies are in anyway arcane. They are deeply rooted the trajectory of the blues from Ellington, through Ornette to the legendary musicians with whom Lavelle has apprenticed.

Let it be said loud and clear, this recording with Matt's quartet is a jazz record. Having recruited Dr. Lewis Porter on piano, Hilliard Greene on bass and Tom Cabrera on drums, clearly Lavelle wanted to make music that swings with a vengeance. And it does. The track Matt Bop is astonishing in its raw swing that emits spirals of associated past and future shapes from the jazz continuum.

As welcoming and universal this music from the Matt Lavelle Quartet is, it is at the level of the personal that it hits home with the tracks For Taps, Matt's Mode, No More Shootings and Tamir Rice.

TRACKLIST

01. Matt's Mode
02. Tamir Rice
03. Matt Bop
04. No More Shootings
05. Fear Has Got to Go
06. For Taps.



All thanks go to the original releaser