Personnel:
Gaël Horellou (as), Etienne Deconfin (p), Viktor Nyberg (b), Ari Hoenig (d)
Reference: FSNT-455
Bar code: 8427328424554
"French saxophonist Horellou also goes under the name Dual Snake, and seems equally at home working in a variety of musical genres as he does with jazz. Brooklyn is a pretty mainstream quartet outing, full of enjoyable compositions that Horellou has penned himself, and seven originals plus Tadd Damerons If You Could See Me Now makes up a solid set for the 70 minutes duration.
Horellous slightly brittle, hard-edged tone on alto works well on these tracks, most of which are mid to fast-paced workouts with musicians he clearly knows well. There is excellent support from Deconfin on piano, with Nyberg and Hoenig anchoring the sound with dependable but swinging work on bass and drums respectively.
The overall fast, probing, feel of the album is tempered most notably on the gentle Central Park Soul, suggesting that Horellou is as at home on ballads and more meditative and soulful songs as he is on uptempo numbers. It certainly adds another dimension to the overall ambience of the album. Damerons lovely If You Could See Me Now also gets a very restrained and reflective treatment from the quartet. The closer, Etang Salé, takes a basic three-note theme and explores it with some typically tight yet swinging improvisations; its strangely reminiscent of Art Peppers superb composition Las Cuevas de Mario, which has to be taken as a compliment."
-John Adcock (Jazz Journal, February 2015)
http://www.jazzjournal.co.uk
