In days of yore, jazz was a playing field with no boundaries and rarely a dull moment. It wasn’t the stuff of stuffy community clubs and late night band leaders for vanilla hosts. There was something dangerous and unpredictable about its appeal; a rebel yell that became the impetus for hip-hop, punk, and rock alike. Or so I’m led to believe by the unbelievable amount of material now at our disposal. I never lived it — too young and far too un-hip to ever do more than put in a CD or lay needle to vinyl for some many years. But listening to this foursome (so brazen as to not even name themselves beyond what was supplied at birth), I begin to get a sense of what it meant to be a musician romanticized by jazz in its heyday. It’s a sexy and dangerous, a shift from our milquetoast existence. It requires something more than passive listening, and to be more than a bit player, you must work well with a group but be unafraid to steal the spotlight when its your turn. Built Like a Brick Shithouse does its muscle bound job, jumping you into this gang of post-orchestration deconstruction. It’s punch after punch under a heavy strobe, until all that’s left is a willing pulp of flesh now able to understand that there’s few musics are ferocious and independent as jazz. Those left to still call its name do so with a passion that is unmatched. Henderson, Mettler, Foisy and Lachance are but a chosen few.
More about: Jeff Henderson, Vicky Mettler, Raphael Foisy and Felix Lachance
