Last Desert

Album review

Last Desert represents guitarist Liberty Ellman's first leader date since 2015. Its title was inspired by the world's leading endurance foot race known as the 4 Deserts Ultramarathon, which takes place over seven days and 250 kilometers in the planet's largest and most forbidding deserts; Antarctica's "White Desert" is the last one in the competition. Ellman's sidemen also accompanied him on 2015's Radiate: alto saxophonist Steve Lehman, trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, tubist Jose Davila, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Damion Reid. Unlike many of his guitar-slinging peers, Ellman rarely tries to dazzle with technique and intensity. Instead, the identifying signature in both his playing and composing is an intimate, communicative language that balances emotional intimacy and economic melody lines with intricate rhythmic and spatial signatures. Opener "Sip" is a case in point as Ellman's guitar muses through the intro with nuanced basswork from Crump, brushed snare, tom-toms, and contemplative phrasing from Finlayson and Lehman; Davila binds it to earth with sparse yet weighty notes. Finlayson takes the harmonic lead on "Last Desert I" with Lehman and Davila accenting his lines with carefully phrased responses. Crump and Reid surprise with a lithe, groove-laden vamp before Ellman leads the frontline horns through an intricate, harmonic passage before taking a chromatically astute solo. "Last Desert II" commences with a quiet blurt from Davila, some skeletal notes from the guitarist, and a wispy melodic head from Lehman up front with Finlayson, as Reid's beat reveals a more muscular undertone before Lehman cements it with a tough, inquisitive solo answered by a growling, simmering break from Davila with arco backing from Crump. When Finlayson enters the foreground, the rhythm section wraps him in Latin-tinged jazz-funk. "Rubber Flowers" is an angular yet deft, engaging post-bop jam with killer solos from Lehman and Ellman that touch on Barney Kessel and blues. The influence of Ellman's boss and mentor Henry Threadgill (the guitarist is a longtime member of Zooid and Double Up) is prevalent on "Doppler," with carefully syncopated dialogue between Davila, Finlayson, and Lehman, as Ellman and Crump add funky comping before inverting the chart. It's joyous, perverse, and captivating. That approach informs closer "Liquid," too, but with a different emphasis: This is a dance tune from the jump, despite knotty rhythmic and tuba accents. Ellman's solo smooths the narrative with precise intervallic arpeggios atop horns that punctuate his phrases before entering a near-pastoral phase of repetitive, languid questioning comprised of stacked harmonies. Davila's short solo is an imaginative masterstroke of melodic invention. Last Desert's compositions offer a harmonic depth and rhythmic breadth in interplay that goes wider and deeper than anything Ellman has done before. While he isn't the flashiest guitarist or composer, his inherent lyricism, expansive tonalities, and luxuriant textures combine with carefully controlled dynamics that allow his sidemen an in-the-moment vulnerability to the music they play. These traits -- evidenced so abundantly on Last Desert -- reveal Ellman as one of modern jazz's most skilled and appealing composers and six-string stylists.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo