“The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Nowadays, jazz guitarists tend to be stylistically eclectic foxes, but William Ash is a hedgehog: not a copycat by any means, but an unapologetic Wes Montgomery acolyte nonetheless. He’s already released a few discs on Japanese labels, but this new trio album (with bassist Dwayne Burno and drummer Mark Taylor) is his first for an American label. The pleasure of listening to The Phoenix is the pleasure of hearing something simple done right. It’s all about sound, pace, and mood: the elemental guitar/bass/drums set-up; the dark-chocolate live-in-the-studio recording; the originals crafted around terse call-and-response patterns and no-tricks chord changes; the stripped-down but faithfully rendered standards (including a fat-free “Sidewinder”). His playing is direct, undramatic and in-the-moment: there are no climaxes, beyond the inevitable development from plainspoken single-note lines to choppier passages of octaves and chords. It’s as “pure” an album as any Cool School document: not a disc to go to if you’re looking for heart-on-sleeve playing, but a terrific album if you’re looking for something as simple and as pleasurable as a glass of ice water.
Posted by nate on January 23, 2005 7:24 PM“The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Scuse my iggerance Nate, but where does the quote come from? The only phoenix I know much about is the one in the Harry Potter books :)
Posted by: Dan Warburton at January 23, 2005 9:46 PMIt's from the 7th-c. BC poet Archilochus, originally, but it's become just a generalpurpose proverb (popularized by Isaiah Berlin in the completely different context of Russian literature & politics).
Posted by: ND at January 24, 2005 6:26 AMah, the "fat-free" delights of "dark-chocolate" and "ice water"
"But come now, draw out the red wine down the lees, for we can never stay sober on this watch duty here." (more Archilochus)
skol:)
Nothing so intoxicating as that, no.
Posted by: ND at January 24, 2005 8:24 PMmmmmmm, conservatism.
Posted by: diana at January 24, 2005 10:32 PMTwo words isn't much to go on. If by "conservative" you mean "dull" then that's certainly not true of the disc. & I have no problem with a player who's not looking to push boundaries.
Posted by: ND at January 25, 2005 12:02 AMAs producer of this disk, I'd have to disagree with the use of the term "conservative" in connection with it. William comes out of the New York underground, and his playing is partly a product of his time with "C" Sharpe and Frank Hewitt. From this he gets a kind of dead-serious authenticity, and his grooves are bittersweet. Politically, he's much closer to the other end of the spectrum.
Luke
Posted by: Luke Kaven at March 1, 2005 12:00 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................