All About Jazz

In its grasp of original style more than a little comparable to Brother Dege's album, Steve Dawson's first record of instrumental music since 2014's Rattlesnake Cage, is comprised of ten self-produced tracks including solo, duo and full-bodied string work. It is chamber music of a rustic sort, all the more compelling to hear because Dawson and his accompanists refuse to hew to many conventions apart from their carefully-configured arrangements; cerebral as is this self-imposed structure, a definite sense of improvisational spontaneity arises from the record , before too long, a physical momentum becomes palpable. Evocative in ways both pastoral and cosmopolitan, this record is quite probably unlike anything else even the most avid musiclovers will hear this year and, because of that, it will no doubt be one of the most satisfying over the long term as well.