Krantz Carlock Lefebvre Wayne Krantz Sony/Blue Frog Rs 299,rating: **** Jazz is the musicians music. From the swinging Thirties to be-bop Fifties,it evolved,with such brilliant musical minds as Coleman Hawkins,John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Hardcore acts like Return to Forever and defining groups such as Spyro Gyra and Weather Report expanded the idiom. Modern gizmos and sounds then steered jazz in an altogether new direction. What the electric trio of Wayne Krantz,Keith Carlock and Tim Lefebvre have done to modern jazz falls in the last category,as they mash up cross-genre jazz with polyrhythmic progressions squeezed out of modern processors. Krantz,along with Carlock on drums and Lefebvre on bass,walks the line between innovative eruptions and train-of-thought melodies. There are blistering tracks like War-torn Johnny and Left it on the playground,which serves artillery drumming,mean bass licks and a frenzied Krantz acting like some mad scientist whos been given a processor to experiment with. A couple of tracks fail to groove. But theres enough to give a high the fuzzy progressions in the Frank Zappa-ish I was like and Holy Joe,the full-blown guitars in Rushdie and some soulful grooves in Mosley. The frenzied energy is the trios mojo. mohan.kumar@expressindia.com
