Trapeze

The team of tenor saxist Rick Mandyck, guitarist John Stowell, bassist Jeff Johnson and drummer John Bishop create sounds akin to vintage ECM sessions on this cool toned collection of mostly instrumentals. Stowell has a tone and approach similar to John Abercrombie, never overplaying his hand as he floats with Mandyck's lithe tenor on "All Day Pass", or rumbling together and creating ripples on "The Reckoning" with Mandyck creating subtones of pulsations. Bishop brushes under the breathy tenor on a gentle "Pause" and the team bounces on the "Highway men" with a light mist hovering on "Anomaly". The quartet gets most frisky on the loose and intuitive "Trapeze" with the gents playing without a net. Watercolors of sound.