MTKJ Quartet - Day of the Race

[Captain Hate]

One of the more pleasant surprises of last year was Making Room for Spaces, the initial recording on Nine Winds for this group named for the last initials of the players. The songs were all challenging yet accessible in a way that reminded me of Braxton's Arista quartet with Kenny Wheeler (the similarity of the instrumentation has something to do with that) even though none of the group really "sounded" like their AB4 counterparts. There is no sophomore jinx with this second release because, if anything, it's even stronger. Again all compositions are by reed player Jason Mears or trumpeter/flugelhornist Kris Tiner and there's not a weak one in the bunch. Through the first 6 (including a two-tune segue between Tiners' "Not Finding Anything" and Mears' "The Beast Wheel's Revenge" counting as one) it seems as the reedist's are uptempo numbers and the brass player's more low-keyed; then Tiner's "I Hate Your Teapot" busts everything to pieces with a frenetic workout that'll have listeners playing "air drums" along with Paul Kikuchi. Good stuff.

[Hackensack]

This is good news to me. I didn't think anyone else heard the first one, but I like it a lot.

[Nate Dorward]

Jason B. gave a positive review to the first one in Cadence but yeah it kind of was overlooked. I liked it, but the new one blows it away! None of the players are familiar names to me but Mears is a frequent playing partner of Harris Eisenstadt, who speaks very highly of him (I recently did an interview with Harris). I wish they'd come up with a catchier bandname though--I started a review of the 1st disc & didn't get past the sentence "It makes a better typo than bandname...." -- but this one I'll definitely be trying to write up as it's excellent stuff & deserves some mooting around. Yeah, a little early-Braxtonish.