Hailed on arrival by critics as the toughest and most creative group of his career, Tommy Smith’s KARMA sees the brilliant Scottish saxophonist lead a band of virtuosic musicians on a deeply grooving acid jazz adventure that draws on influences from around the world.
featuring Tommy Smith (saxes, shakuhatchi, synth), Kevin Glasgow (electric bass), Steve Hamilton (piano, synth), Alyn Cosker (drums)
Comprising Smith on tenor and soprano saxophones and Shakuhachi flute, mega-talented pianist and keyboardist Steve Hamilton, six string bass guitar sensation Kevin Glasgow and jet-powered drummer Alyn Cosker, KARMA presents music of gobsmacking energy and superb inventiveness. Writing for these musicians has given Smith a new edge. KARMA’S ten brand new compositions, while acknowledging past masters including Weather Report and Jan Garbarek, drive forward concisely and urgently into the urban club culture of the current age with occasional pauses in a chill-out zone that evokes Smith’s native Scottish landscapes, Japanese meditation rites, Indian rhythms, Arabic tones and Irish sentimentality. Tommy Smith website
Scottish saxophonist Smith, a teenage prodigy in the 80s, is nowadays one of the most widely respected of European jazz musicians – not just for his sax mastery, but for his influence on his homeland's jazz culture through the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and its youth wing he founded and still runs. Smith can play the daylights out of full-on post-bop or explore north-Euro ambiance, but this is a hard-hitting fusion album – one that sounds pretty familiar at first, with its hammering backbeats (from the ferocious Alyn Cosker), slick unison choruses and Headhunters keyboard and bass guitar effects. But Smith is much too smart for the obvious, and this set for what he calls his "grunge band" turns out to be a rare splicing of rich-toned, pipe-like themes, fiercely guttural up-tempo tenor improv, Arabic and Irish music, tight grooving that suggests Weather Report or Chris Potter's Underground band, and some haunting atmospherics from his shakuhachi bamboo flute. Smith's compositions are way ahead of the usual slam-bang fusion forays, and the sombrely pensive Star (based on an Irish folk song) is a great sax-ballad performance. (John Fordham/The Guardian)
