De Raad Van Toezicht
De Raad

Snarky Puppy have (re)opened a path.

Many musicians have decided to follow it over the last five years.

It's undeniable, in my opinion, given the number of jazz-fusion bands emerging in the States, Australia, Canada, Europe (including Italy with "Open Letter") who are coloring the musical rainbow in search of their own sound, their own concepts, but that manages to allow the blend between soloists eager to emerge and the brilliant care for arrangements of the common parts.

The experimentation is not so much in the notes to be played, those have been around for a long time now, but in conceiving new sounds, new phrases, rarely in a quoting key, and playing, a lot, massively on the rhythms.

Within this trend, there is a band that in 2017 particularly involved me in their creation, they are De Raad van Toezicht ("The board of directors") who with "De Raad" ("The board", indeed) made their debut in the European scene.

Their qualities reached several competent ears, it seems, as they were successfully invited to North Sea Jazz (2016) and Montreux Jazz Festival (2017); an important featuring (in this 2018), that of one of the most renowned and musically valid guitarists, Pat Metheny, and the local blessing of the prolific trumpeter/composer from the land of tulips, Ack van Rooyen (The Ramblers), as well as the Rosenberg Trio, are a mini insurance and guarantee of peculiarity.

The main composers are the trumpeter and flugelhorn player Joël Botma and the bassist, guitarist and drummer Teun Creemers, but all the pieces are written with at least four hands, often six or eight, to convey the idea of sharing this groove and this jovial spirit that connects every piece.

The Morricone-like "Wolfe" fills the album, just like the playful "Nowhere to go."

There is, however, passionate lyricism in the exchanges between Mirco Wessolly's violin and Jasper Mellema's piano in "Maji," but it is the rhythm that moves everything, on oriental harmonies (the harmonic minor always works properly), while we find pure joy and fun in "Snake," driven by a pop-gospel melody (thanks to the addition of Philipp Frenzel's organ) to a finale that surprisingly, and with compositional skill, takes you back to the 50s revues.

The organ solo is lively on a funky brass theme (Yoran Aarssen on alto/soprano sax, Jesse Schilderink on tenor sax, and Sam Thomas on trombone, along with the aforementioned Botma on trumpet), the violin is delicate, the moment of guitarist Dung Hoang is dark and creatively sketchy (in my view the best soloist of the group) in "Beam," which seems like a painter taking colors from his palette and splattering them with ever-increasing vigor on a blank canvas, until creating, speaking of refraction, an unprecedented nocturnal aura. It is certainly one of the three "great pieces" of the album.

Jazz ("Anyone Seen Mike Hawk"), funk ("Praise the sun"), and Caribbean ("Loco Jardino") could be the title of a film, but they are choreographically the main sounds that close the work.

I hastily return to the opening because that's where we find the best pieces.

The funky guitar of Philipp Ullrich marks the intro of "The Collector." Beyond a pleasant theme, with well-studied and harmonized breaks that pleasantly surprise, from the start it's the ability of the two drummers. Janik Hüsch and Bouke Hofma manage to get the listener off the chair on the first listen, making them move non-stop. Deadly touch and groove for the duo of percussionists who perform a stunning bossa nova passage. They anticipate, move the solo itself and integrate amazingly with the initial funky theme.

I close today's recommendation with my favorite track: "Londinium." A track that appears without huge rhythmic headaches, initially standing out with pastel-violet hues, with a magnificent taste on a staff paper. The theme is there, recognizable, you can touch it with your hand, you can enjoy it with your hearing, and it makes you feel good. It is a played landscape, not painted, imaginable between indigo and blue, pleasant to vocally draw, varying the hue through the timbre, until a decisive change of scenario marked by the continuous bass of the piano. A decisive green. An escalation begins that makes the emotional part of our self pop, on warm nuances, until it returns to that arpeggio and the main melody that got your heart beating, a bit more serenely.

These 12 Dutchmen have created an acoustic experience, a colored bow, which I warmly recommend.