Moon June Records has announced a new release:
ALEX MAGUIRE SEXTET “Brewed In Belgium”
Alex Maguire and the fine fleur of Belgian jazz and jazz-rock musicians team up to launch a repertoire ranging from lyrical to groovy tunes, haunting melodies, free improvisation and high-energy interaction. In this record, Maguire’s Belgian sextet includes Jean-Paul Estiévenart on trumpet, Michel Delvilleon guitar and guitar-synth, Damien Polard on bass and Laurent Delchambre on drums (four members of notable Belgian rock-jazz band and another exclusive MoonJune recording artist The Wrong Object) as well as Flemish saxophonist, now based in New York City, Robin Verheyen (who has just released his first solo opus with American pianist Bill Carrothers). The quality of this recording, which was captured live by VPRO (the Dutch National Radio) in October 2007, confirms Maguire’s status as a vital presence on the international jazz scene, one which is capable of lacing the most intense lyricism with a juicy experimentalism that is reminiscent of Cecil Taylor’s best work and results in what is perhaps best described as a paradoxical and delightfully unstable form of “lyric experimentalism”. Maguire’s talents as a pianist and a keyboard player are so diverse, his “touch” so personal (Maguire belongs to that class of musicians who have succeeded in developing their own, immediately recognizable sound), his telepathic conversations with the other musicians in the band so explosive and brilliantly unpredictable that the line that divides the written parts from the collective improvisations is often impossible to draw. It is a tribute to the sextet’s improvisational skills that the mixture remains coherent and fascinating throughout despite the wide range of styles that characterizes this highly unusual record. These, of course bear the mark of Canterbury School prog-jazz, but hey also contain swinging upbeat tunes such as “John’s Fragment”,poignant, meditative and mournful hymns such as “Psychic Warrior” (Maguire’s compositions dedicated to late Softmachinist and British saxophone jazz legend Elton Dean) as well as faster-than-light melodic improvisations like “Pumpkin Soup” that flow in and out of funky syncopated cadences and English pastoral flavors.
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