Martin Budde - Back Burner (2024)

With a patient, eclectic openness to musical directions, Seattle guitarist Martin Budde steers his trio through a collection of mostly original compositions on his first Origin recording. Thoroughly rooted in the fluid, modern jazz guitar sounds of the last 50 years, the lone cover, Joni Mitchell's "My Old Man," offers a hint to some early influences while playing Americana, country & folk music with his father in the backwoods of Alaska. Drummer Xavier Lecouturier and bassist Ben Feldman are his longtime collaborators in the more densely eclectic modern jazz sextet Meridian Odyssey, and here they collaborate beautifully on the space and sonorities of Budde's trio aesthetic. Even through the moments of modern angularity, or introspective passages tinged with melancholy, there's always a sense of uplift and openness in his music. More than just a stellar album, Back Burner is a declaration of arrival, as Budde sets his gaze on finding his own way forward.