As a music aficionado who\u2019s strictly a voyeur, a writer who\u2019s never played a lick or tried to fit different musical components together into a cohesive whole, I\u2019m intrigued by the idea of a bass player as bandleader.\u00a0\u00a0 When your instrument is the wallflower of the bunch, the subtle rhythmic marker lurking between, behind and underneath featured elements like guitar, drums, keys and sax, how does your musical personality find expression in the music?<\/p>\n
Bay Area bassist\/composer Edo Castro achieves his own distinctive voice in significant part by featuring a pair of seven-string basses with all of the expanded tonal range and expressiveness that description would imply.\u00a0 The ultimate beauty of this album, though, is in the way Castro weaves his nimble lines in and out of the foreground of these tracks, playing a mostly supporting role on ensemble jazz numbers like \u201cThe Gathering\u201d and \u201cBent Blues,\u201d then taking the spotlight on softer, sparser tunes like the contemplative \u201c57th Latitude,\u201d where he is accompanied only by Michael Marning\u2019s e-bow and midi and loop textures, and \u201cA Travel Lodge Moment,\u201d a sort of post-bop fugue.<\/p>\n
Castro clearly feels equally as comfortable powering through the modern jazz grooves of the former pair as tiptoeing through the more contemplative, New Age-ish contrails of the latter.\u00a0 On \u201cSneaky Pete,\u201d Castro finds the seam between the two approaches, delivering a quiet, steady interlude of a solo in the midst of a funky little soul-jazz number featuring Richard Gee\u2019s snappy, stinging lead guitar.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Much of the remainder of the album unfolds in similar form, as Castro alternates solo\/duo meditative moments (\u201cWhen The Stars Fell On You,\u201d \u201cDrifting Across The Night Sky,\u201d \u201cAs The Cherry Blossoms Fall\u201d) with deftly executed, often-challenging jazz trio numbers (the synth-heavy \u201cAll In,\u201d the lounge-silky \u201cLeft Of Center,\u201d the Mark Isham trumpet spotlight \u201cSacred Grafitti\u201d).\u00a0 Castro\u2019s iconoclastic side is perhaps most evident in the bravura \u201cNo End In Sight,\u201d where he and guest Al Caldwell delivering a pulsing, spider-fingered, utterly unique duet between Caldwell\u2019s nine-string bass and Castro\u2019s seven-string, with percussion and synth accents for texture. <\/p>\n
The common thread throughout all of this musical adventuring is Castro\u2019s tasteful, precise playing and warm, open musical vision.\u00a0 On Sacred Grafitti<\/i>, Castro explores the boundaries between modern jazz and meditative New Age with uncommon subtlety and grace.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7874],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-42145","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-edo-castro","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42145"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}