One of these days we need to put Quin Kirchner, Makaya McCraven, and Chad Taylor in a steel cage with their drum kits of choice and just see what happens. Smart money will be on professional, amiable greetings followed by one of the most tactile and nuanced polyrhythmic choreographies witnessed in this or any lifetime. But I'm a betting man. For me, I'm willing to drop my dough on the off chance their combined rhythmic forces peel a sliver sized crack in the space-time continuum into a yawning wormhole and causes the world to invert and pass through into a parallel dimension. Maybe one where universal health care is a political possibility. It's just a thought. On a somewhat related note, my partner's insurance just informed her that they're no longer covering one her medications. A drug that she needs, which is prescribed by her doctor, and that she takes at her doctor's direction. But her insurance company decided she doesn't need it, so… If you have a better idea than rupturing the fabric of reality to prevent bureaucrats from coming between us and health decisions made between us and our doctor, I'm open to suggestions.
I digress, I digress, I degrees... Sometimes the only thing that seems good in this world is music. And music is always good. Especially, Quin Kirchner's music. If you hadn't gathered from the intro, Kirchner is a Chicago based jazz percussionist. A go-to performer for many fellow travelers in northern Illinois, from indie-folksys like Ryley Walker, to accomplished jazz ensembles such as the Nick Mazzarella Quintet, even to more experimental outfits including Brian J Sulpizio's Health&Beauty. Kirchner's latest full-length record is The Shadows and The Light, and it is a deeply adventurous and optimistic exercise that combines Kirchner's love for Chicago's tradition of free jazz, filtered with modern interpretations, and strained through concerted silos of post-bop concessions. The album is a mix of original songs and humbly ambitious revues, such as the sweeping, funky, heel-clicking cover of Frank Foster's "At This Point In Time" and the deftly measured, horn lead repartee of Carla Bley's King Korn. The material embodied on these two tracks represents the more formalist, tonal side of the album's character. The other half is best exemplified by the clattering surge and spacy scatter of "Ecliptics" which makes use of confounding polyrhythms and a wheezing Electro-Harmonix Memory Man to create the impression of a single, unbroken groove, which changes shape and color without losing its texture. Between the poles of the functional and the discordant, lie the sonorous hard bop crackle and bright effervescence of "Jupiter Moon" and the closer, "Lucid Dream" with its uncertain footing but assured grace. Most surprising of all is the title track, which features subtle Brazilian rhythms in dialogue with gradually more compelling horn melodies and putatively adversarial chords progressions, the latter of which drags the song down into intertidal pools, only to intentionally release it and allow it's tension exfoliate into bounding, brassy spirals. Another great jazz album from one of Chicago's many abundantly talented denizens. Kirchner can't fix all my life problems, but at least he can put me in a better mood and for that, he has my gratitude.
