As co-founder of the Chicago Underground party, co-conspirator with everyone from Rob Mazurek, Jeff Parker, and Fred Anderson to Marc Ribot, James Brandon Lewis, and the late Jaimie Branch, drummer Chad Taylor is a polymathmatic badass with deep ties to the currently ascendant jazz and improvised music scene exploding out of Chicago. He doesn’t release records with his own name in the pole position very often, so when he does, it’s worth taking notice.
Recorded by a quintet consisting of Taylor, trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, saxist Bryan Rogers, vibraphonist Victor Vieira-Branco, and bassist Matt Engle, Smoke Shifter navigates an ethereal post bop realm that nods to its sixties past without sounding like it comes from any other time period but now. The title track goes straight for the tuneful jugular, as the horns and vibes weave an atmospheric tapestry that drapes across your shoulders. Cuts like “Broken Horse” and “Paradise Lawns/October 29” introduce a fascinating tension into the ensemble performance, as if everyone is playing the harmony lines instead of the melody and Taylor keeps the rhythms whipping from ambient splash to superheated boil. The lovely but enigmatic “October 26” settles into wistful balladry, if the fond nostalgia was for that time everyone buried a body together.
While Taylor’s dynamic kit work leads the other musicians down the path he wants them to travel, the MVPs here are Finlayson and Vieira-Branco. The former’s willingness to stick to his melodic lines in the face of his fellows’ spiky excursions and the latter’s sticky churn that fills out any empty space between rhythm and harmony give the music its distinctive color. Taylor is an essential cog in the vast machinery of his many projects, but Smoke Shifter makes it clear he needs to hang out his own shingle more often.
