Diluvio

4 STARS The third album for master drummer/composer Robby Ameen - engine driver for the Afrojazz-tastic likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Ruben Blades - is as spirited and accomplished as fans would expect. And as hard-hitting. While Ameen can do deft understatement, allowing starry brass-wielding mates including Bob Franceschini and Conrad Herwig to shine, Diluvio does what it says on the tin. When Ameen lets rip, as he does in charged, kaleidoscopic bursts throughout, he unleashes a veritable deluge of Afro-Cuban, jazz and post-bop rhythms. Bassist Lincoln Goines - with whom Ameen co-authored method book 'Funkifying the Clavé' - helps keep the vibes at a premium. Grammy-winning pianist Edsel Gomez adds thoughtful accents on the silvery 'Fast Eye'. Mauricio Herrera's percussion stylings buoy 'Cremant', around which Herwig's trombone glides and saxophonist Franceschini quotes from 'The Pink Panther' - the disc's sole hackneyed touch, given the Mancini tune's ubiquity on the contemporary Latin jazz scene. As skilled a composer as he is a drummer, which is saying something, Ameen has channeled a sensibility nurtured as a young frequenter of downtown jazz clubs into eight multi-textured originals. The closer, an inspired take on Coltrane's 'Impressions' - a tune with which Herwig is long acquainted - is the Latin sun after the storm.