Julian Lage: The Layers
Author: Selwyn Harris
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Bill Frisell |
Label: |
Blue Note |
Magazine Review Date: |
April/2023 |
Media Format: |
CD, LP, DL |
Catalogue Number: |
4866912/3 |
RecordDate: |
Rec. date not stated |
Julian Lage has not only been prolific but gone up a few gears creatively with this being his third recording for Blue Note in as little as two years. At the same time he's been making a sizeable impression on the UK ‘live’ scene with mesmerising performances as part of Charles Lloyd's Kindred Spirits and with his trio in Cadogan Hall at last year's London Jazz Festival. Lage has one of the most stimulating, uplifting takes on jazz guitar in recent times, as an heir to the legacy of Messrs Metheny, Scofield and Frisell (who guests here) as well as lower profile guitar heroes Abercrombie and Rosenwinkel. Lage has described his new six-track EP The Layers as being the “musical seeds” of View With a Room, a companion piece to last year's widely heralded album release. Stripped back to a series of solo and duo settings, it has the feel of a work-in-progress demo with themes a little on the sketchy side. Yet it's one that highlights the gentle, more intimate side to Lage's distinctive aesthetic in which he engages with influences from classical and Spanish acoustic guitar music to alt. country/folk-jazz through to electric R&B, psych-folk and other guitar-led singer-songwriter styles. You won't find here the kind of modernist and soul-jazz influences and more solo-y stuff of previous albums. Yet The Layers is still entirely characteristic of this most warmly communicative of hip contemporary guitar stylists.
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