Digital Primitives - Digital Primitives (2007)

Tracklist

01. Turn It Up
02. Ol' Saint Peter
03. Human Interface
04. Electric Garden
05. Bones
06. Digital Primitives
07. Misanthropes
08. True to Life
09. Money Wars
10. Refuge
11. Back It Up

Digital Primitives, with Chad Taylor on drums, expands the sonic landscape Assif Tsahar and Cooper-Moore carved out with drummer Hamid Drake on Lost Brother (Hopscotch, 2006) by removing a few of the typical saxophone trio tracks and replacing them with more in the way of fuzz, distortion and over-modulation. Not that this band is in need of exotic touches, since Cooper-Moore seems to have set aside his piano virtuosity and reapplied it to his own homemade instruments, including the bows (mouth and one-string diddley) and the bango (which doesn't quite sound like a banjo).

As a listener, you have to be willing to go where Cooper-Moore takes you, as Tsahar and Taylor are inclined to do. But while the trio executes the slow march of "Bones and the 1970s sitcom-theme funk of "Misanthropes with expected skill and effortlessly moves from the second-line Meters-rhythm of "Turn it Up to explore the atonality of "Money Wars, it's the unconventional tracks that make this group special.
The amplified diddley-bow and breakbeat of "Human Interface ; the static, doings and whirs that encircle Tsahar's wheezing tenor on "Electric Garden ; and the title track, with didgeridoo mumbling in the background and a distorted mouth bow crying like a saw, all allow dissonance to rise organically from the mix and embellish the established rhythms.

Best of all, however, might be "Ol' Saint Peter, where Cooper-Moore's lyrics wed the heavenly with the earthly and jaunty bango strumming, topped off by a lovely Tsahar tenor overdub, carries his megaphoned singing voice along. It whets your appetite for Cooper-Moore Plays and Sings the Standards.

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