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CD Review: Lan Xang- Hidden Gardens

Label: Naxos Jazz
Personnel: Donny McCaslin-tenor and soprano sax, flute, Tunisian horn, percussion, David Binney-alto saxophone, clarinet, live samples, Scott Colley-bass, percussion, Kenny Wollesen-drums, percussion

My first reaction upon hearing Lan Xang’s Hidden Gardens was that this a band of young guns with a distict and unique identity. Lan Xang’s two reed players, Donny McCaslin and David Binney, who co-produced the project, bring a focused attention to their playing with this ensemble (and with each other) that remains consistent throughout the entire recording. Regardless of whether they are playing tenor and alto, or soprano and clarinet, there is always a consciousness to their harmonies, an awareness of roles to be filled in this pianoless quartet.

Playing without benefit of piano or guitar allows a degree of harmonic freedom, but also carries with it a responsibility to support the soloists by comping or playing lines; McCaslin and Binney consistently pay attention to this detail. The other two members of Lan Xang, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Kenny Wollesen likewise contribute to this group identity. Colley is a subtly powerful bassist, who in the absence of a chordal instrument, keeps the rhythmic ideas coming. Drummer Wollesen also skillfully feeds snippets of rhythm to the horn players, particularly on the funky numbers. The title track Hidden Gardens is a tour de force for this type of interplay.

The skillful integration of sampled sounds is another signature of the Lan Xang personality. There are a number of what I would call sound sculptures interspersed throughout the recording, entitled Xang Six, Xang Seven and so forth, most of them shorter than two minutes in length. They include recorded sounds of indigenous Asian music, gongs, wooden flutes and percussion, electronic noises, echoes, voices and the blending of the “real” instruments of the ensemble. There are occasions as well, when the sampled sounds are included in the longer pieces played by the ensemble, as an additional solo voice or as another layer of sonic embellishment. Of course these mixed marriages of the acoustic and the electronic have happened before Lan Xang, but they have often proved to be incompatible unions in retrospect. Not so with this project. The members of Lan Xang have so masterfully joined these disparate elements that there were times when it was impossible to tell exactly what I was hearing, especially in the case of percussion instruments. It would have been useful to include in the packaging some details of the process by which Lan Xang achieves their overall sound. More specifics about the sampled (and other) sounds, and how it all works when they play live. 

- Richard Mayer

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