They say that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Well, that being the case, “Pork Fat” proves Ari Joshua to be an astute judge of character, a collaborator with the very best musicians around, and a mover in rareified circles. But we knew that already, didn’t we?
Gathering around him the great and the good from that beguiling realm where rock and soul moves bleed into jazz-funk grooves, namely sax sensation Skerik of Critters Buggin, Garage A Trois fame, Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio’s titular head, and Polyrhythmics drummer extraordinaire Grant Schroff, they make a glorious sound.
“Pork Fat” sizzles in its own swampy sonics, effortlessly funky, seemingly simultaneously loose and relaxed, yet poised, purposeful, and precise: it swings and slinks and slides and slithers towards you, hypnotic and toe-tappingly infectious.
And given that every member of the band is top of their game, seasoned players in their own right, they all get their time in the spotlight. But not in that way where solos seem to be a thing apart from the rest of the song, here they step forward in a way that feels perfectly natural, each highlighting a different aspect of the song’s essence.
The drums build a perfect structure, spacious and exploratory as required. The organ ebbs and flows between laying down a sonic platform upon which to hang everything and more dynamic playing to create both understatement and rising tensions. And on top of it all, guitar and saxophone wander through the landscape in a call-and-response duet. Everyone is a rhythm player, everyone is crucial to the melody, everyone is a soloist, everyone is everything in between.
You don’t have to be a jazz-head, a soul brother, or a funky freak to get into “Pork Fat.” This is music that anyone and everyone can understand and appreciate, not just for its understated virtuosity but for its sheer contagiousness.
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