Transatlantic sax-bass-drums trio
the Kandinsky Effect are adept at mixing creative jazz and electronics without the electronics getting in the way. It helps that saxophonist
Warren Walker and bassist
Gaël Petrina (based in Paris) and drummer
Caleb Dolister (based in New York) leave plenty of room in their arrangements for laptop and effects -- if you stripped away the electronics, the sound would be uncluttered and even sparse.
Walker's melody lines (he's the main composer) and phrasing are often long, drawn out, and not exceedingly complicated; this particular style might invite lesser musicians to lay the electronics on thick, filling in all the empty spaces and not allowing the music to breathe. Thankfully,
Walker and company vary the program considerably from track to track, sometimes giving the electronics a prominent role and other times using effects to color rather than dominate the music, and also applying treatments in a way that paints compositional changes in bold relief. Leadoff track "Johnny Utah" is one of the electronics-heavy numbers, starting with
Petrina's funky bassline and
Dolister's crisp and insistent timekeeping drums beneath
Walker's simple melody/riff, which gets some echoey treatment as the bass transitions into a deep electro throb; the group is alternately rattling and balladic before launching into one of the album's more outré jams, with the signal from
Walker's wild solo split from the center of the stereo field into a left-channel doppelgänger burning away in an alternate harmonic universe.