The Andy Sugg Group – Wednesdays At M’s (Kel-CD)

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The Andy Sugg Group is a Melbourne–based jazz quartet, led by tenor and soprano saxophonist Andy Sugg.  Stylistically, the group explores contemporary post-Coltrane improvisations embracing an eclectic range of compositional influences, which include contemporary jazz, funk, R&B and avant-pop.  The world they inhabit can often be intellectual and intimidating to new ears.  Sugg likes to keep things accessible, for the most part.  Think of them as a gateway drug to modern jazz.

Wednesdays at M’s, was recorded in New York City last year with a group of expat Aussies and New Yorkers, including Sean Wayland (piano), Nate Wood (drums), his daughter Kate Kelsey-Sugg (piano, vocals) and Matt Clohesy (bass).  In the liner notes Sugg tells us about avant-garde Arleen Schloss’ loft space on Broome Street, on the Lower East Side.

Schloss hosted gigs for some of the city’s most celebrated bohemians including the artists Basquiat, Bogosian, Branca and Sonic Youth.  The gigs were called Wednesdays at A’s.  Downstairs Sugg’s Aussie mate Mike had an old dance studio.  So, in that tradition Sugg chose to play and record there over a month in December 2015.  All eight of these original tracks came from jams at that building.  In honour of the general coolness of the building and the concerts that were held upstairs they called the album Wednesday’s at M’s.

Production is essential to a good jazz record.  Digital recording often steals the soul and personality of the music by making everything to clinical and perfect.  Records of the Chess and Blue Note era had a warm sound, partly because they we made in single take ensemble sittings and partly because of the equipment used.  It’s very hard to capture that these days.

I know artists like Nathan Haines go out of their way by recording on parquet floored studios, with analogue kit just to get to the approximate sound.  Sadly, Sugg’s album doesn’t even get close and this is a bit of a let- down.  I really wanted to hear that breathy reed playing from his tenor sax, or feel Nate Wood’s drum kit and that slight reverb of the cymbals and the snare springs when the bass reverberates.  It’s those little things that engineers with modern equipment seem to want to filter out and that little slice of the magic potion is lost for ever.

Given that this album was made on NYC’s lower East Side, and given the mana of the location, I was expecting some of the grittiness of the city to have been blown in the door during the production.  That said, the production doesn’t take away from the playing.

There’s a good dose of edgy from Ben Eunson’s guitar solo on the opener Djuna at One, which breaks up a relatively straight forward ensemble piece led, until then, at least by Sugg’s sax and Woods’ double time drumming. I like the bouncing of the groove which keeps the whole tune afloat across the full 8 minutes of this instrumental.  The groove is buoyant, rolling along on the tough acoustic bass of Matt Clohesy until Eunson’s electric guitar chops into it, right down to the bone. Eunson’s playing across Wednesdays at M’s is a highlight: biting here, fluid there.  He plays with a wide range of textures that should be an object lesson to more than a few contemporary jazz guitarists. His tone is metallic but fleshed out with more than enough blues to make it sing beautifully.

You get a more ‘rock’ feel on Iron on Man (is this a joke on NYC landmark The Flat Iron Building?), which powers along with real confidence.  What seems a bit lacking, though, is some lyrics and vocals.  This tune repeats itself twice, like a chorus.  It seems the perfect places to do this.

For variety we get a bit of genre-fusion in three part suite, Hemispheric: Part 1 is a sort of melodic wash, like a description of the night sky, perhaps.  This is music layered in Christian Almiron’s Zawinulesque synths.  There is a slight nod to the pioneers like Jean Michel Jarre in there.  Almiron comes back in Part 3 by swooping down to bring bright choppy rhythmic themes across a battery of sax and more double time, syncopated drumming.  This is both academic and accessible.  The links to the Jazz masters, especially Charles Mingus’s classical works (such as Let My Children Hear Music), are just bubbling under the surface.

A highlight of the album is Mandela.  It’s built on criss-crossing riffs.  I wouldn’t have guessed these had African roots, so I’m not sure of the title’s origins but it’s a groove that pushes Sugg and Eunson to some spiralling high points.

Both the band’s playing and Sugg’s are consistent and technically brilliant throughout.  As I said earlier, I would have liked this record to sound a little less clinical and precise.  For me the dirtier the sound is with Jazz the more character it has.  I don’t mean that Sugg plays without soul or humanity.  Because he most definitely does.  I think that will be more obvious though when he breaks through that fourth wall on the live stage.  Look out for his tour, it’ll be a good one.  For both jazz lovers and those new to the genre. Looking forward to it.

 

Tim Gruar

http://andysugg.com/gigs/

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