Soul Bodies revisited
Hamid Drake and Assif Tsahar, Live at Glenn Miller Café, Ayler Records aylCD-025. Recorded at a Swedish concert in November 2002, this is a sequel to the earlier Soul Bodies, though it’s an entirely different session rather than leftover material from the first. Peter Kowald had just passed on a couple months earlier, and the duo pay him handsome tribute with a reading of Kowald’s “Mother and Father,” splitting the difference between elegy and “Una Muy Bonita” bounciness. The recording engineer still seems to be getting his act together on the opening “Warriors of Stillness”, judging by the persistent crackling and glitches, but otherwise it’s one of the album’s strongest performances, a lazy slow-burn groove ripped open by free interludes that keeps rolling for 17 minutes. Drake’s grooves are soulful and slow-rocking, and Tsahar’s in good form, sporting a strong David Murray influence (though Tsahar’s hoarser, more bluntly blues-based, and lacks Murray’s romanticism/sentimentality). Aside from a couple free-tempo tracks the general vibe is halfway between funk and calypso, and so it’s appropriate that the encore is a thumbnail version of “St. Thomas”. ***1/2 out of 5.