David Binney - Bastion of Sanity (2005)

The Florida-born alto saxophonist David Binney never sounds as if he can't evade or transform any particular musical or geographical roots. One of the most absorbingly original younger saxophonists on the international jazz scene, Binney certainly doesn't disguise his early models - Wayne Shorter and Ornette Coleman sound like they're high on his list - but he is comfortable with most of the language changes that have happened to the jazz of the past 40 years.

However, unlike his virtuoso sax colleague Chris Potter (who imaginatively partners him on this album), Binney is fond of disruptions of melody and rhythm that put him further out on a limb.


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This disc finds Binney and Potter sharing the alto-tenor frontline with a fine young New York band drawn from regular visitors to Greenwich Village's 55 Bar - including the brilliant pianist Jacob Sacks, who made such an impact with Binney and the same bass/drums partnership of Thomas Morgan and Dan Weiss on their visit to London last year.

That gig operated in something of a slow-burn, low-volume manner whereas this collection ups the intensity and urgency, frequently through Binney's highly inventive dialogues with Potter. There are seven Binney originals on it, but the feel seems closer to the jazz tradition. Lester Left Town, a straight swinger Wayne Shorter wrote for Art Blakey, opens the proceedings with its downward-spiralling, guffawing primary line and bouncy resolutions.

Typically, Binney enjoys slowing down its jazzy momentum, arching idly over long notes where you expect a triplet feel, or arresting the momentum with car-horn beeps. The thoughtful Try is a purring episode of long splashy notes, bumpy accented chords with a mixture of suspended time and quietly rugged funk. Binney's Wayne Shorter allegiances are strongly audible on it, and the way the two saxes share the melody at first, then pull apart into counterpoint underscores the leader's structural sophistication.

Bastion of Sanity is a postbop bustle with that familiar sense of lots of notes trying to squeeze through the same narrow doorway; Last Minute is a fast mixed-tempo feature with a distantly Caribbean feel (Binney and Potter together are breathtaking on it), a Duke Ellington ballad explores Potter's versatility of style and tone control, and Jacob Sacks delivers a stunning solo of fast free-jazz ripples, time-jugglings, silences and dashing counterpoint on the fierce Gesturecalm. This is right up to the intriguingly independent Binney's usual standard.