On
Moonstone Journey,
John Tchicai is joined by the young Danish avant-gardists of OK Nok Kongo. (The Danish expression "OK Nok" roughly translates as "A-OK," and "Kongo" is the African nation from which
Tchicai's father hailed.) Together, the group and
Tchicai set out to explore the space between comfort and unfamiliarity, between the known and the unknown.
Tchicai's pieces (he wrote all but one) range from the bright,
Ornette Coleman-style swing of "Moonstone Journey" and "Climbing the Mountain" to the abstraction of "The Frog and the Snake" and "Finding the Path." Somewhere in between falls the relatively relaxed, quasi-Latin groove that animates "A Chaos With Some Kind of Order" and "Holy Coordinator." "Spirals of Ruby" reveals yet another of
Tchicai's facets: funk that could almost be classified as M-Base.