Personnel:
Frédéric Borey (ts, ss), Yoann Loustalot (tp, Flgh), Yoni Zelnik (b), Frédéric Pasqua (d)
Reference: FSNT-542
Bar code: 8427328435420
"The title of the last track might provide a clue. It’s possible that the guys are quietly referencing Old And New Dreams, the 1980s quartet of Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell that sought to keep alive the sound of the original Ornette Coleman quartet while the founding leader went off to explore guitars. It’s the more modest influence to avow and for the most part Lucky Dog seem more than up to the call.
In reality, what they do is to take the harmonically open and unfixed sound that Coleman introduced into jazz and reattach it to some even earlier antecedents, so there is a raw, almost atavistic feel to these stop-start themes. The deceptively lazy swing of Manzana Mood catches the group at its most user friendly, but composer Loustalot’s understated solo is a model of order and control, even as it seems to meander without destination. Likewise his fellow frontman Borey, who’s a more naturally exuberant performer, almost as if Coleman and Cherry, or Cherry and Redman, had swapped musical personalities.
For much of the time, Zelnik and Pasqua sustain a fairly regular metre, but both have the ability to accelerate unexpectedly through a bar or two before putting on the brakes again. It’s a deliciously unnerving skill and it adds substantially to a strong, clever sequence of music from a group who’ve now been around long enough to know each other’s moves and moods inside out."
Brian Morton
Jazz Journal (May, 2017)
