Stephen Small - Slow Drag (2009)

Although this is his debut solo album, keyboard and piano player Stephen Small has been around the block, musically speaking. Currently a member of Autozamm, studio session band Pop Science, NZ Musician song columnist and a music lecturer at Auckland University, the man knows his chops. Sax greats John Coltrane and Michael Brecker are singled out as influences. I’m hearing Herbie Hancock and (perhaps incongruously) the acid jazz of The James Taylor Quartet. Skirting around bop, jazz funk and exotica, the keyboard tones have a pleasingly crummy decay. It’s precise without being fussy, virtuoso but not superfluous. Road Trip boasts a ’70s clav funk vibe. Departure leads with widescreen piano into a squelchy midsection workout before dumping you back on a forlorn beach at low tide. Throughout, notes and tones evoke memory traces from the history of modern music. The solo in JamF is pure Mummenschanz. Non-afficionados may find the instrumental hour a long ride, but this much care and attention will finesse an appreciative ear. A voice in Warm Bed/Cold Heart seems to offer reproach with an echoed refrain of “amateur”. Or is this sly self-deprecation? No matter, Small is a maestro and ‘Slow Drag’ a masterful expression of his prodigious skill.