White Rocket – White Rocket – Diatribe DIACD007, 65:41 ****:
(Greg Felton – piano; Sean Carpio – drums; Jacob Wick – trumpet)
Some could call White Rocket’s music free jazz or avantgarde jazz, and while those labels indirectly help explain what the piano-drums-trumpet trio performs, instrumental improvisational music seems an appropriate starting place, since White Rocket’s material does not fit easily into any one specific jazz genre or pigeonhole.
Sean Carpio, Jacob Wick, and Greg Felton are influenced by Indian Carnatic music, pop artists such as Nick Drake and Björk, classical composers like Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith, and jazz players that include Miles Davis. But those originators are not overtly perceived among the nine tracks on the threesome’s debut release. Rather, listeners can hear original and versatile ingredients with an utterly unique viewpoint, where there’s often a sparse melody and diversely honed choral changes.
White Rocket is a democracy. All three members contribute to the writing: Wick and Felton both have four pieces and Carpio donates one. The unusual configuration of trumpet, piano, and drums also lends itself to a triad unity, since the bass-less structure forces the participants to take on different roles in each composition.
There is a sense of tension and underlying risk which permeates the proceedings. Opener “Mutatis Mutandis” is leavened by Felton’s lashed piano, Wick’s twisting and complexly wrought trumpet soloing, and Carpio’s dynamically shifting drums. Felton’s piano undulates a ghostly chord progression beneath Wick’s oscillating trumpet. The song exits with a murmuring and slightly foreboding bearing, a haunting way to finish.
White Rocket then advances toward a relatively standard route with Felton’s narrative “His Story,” where the instruments call and respond to each other in what starts out as a straightforward approach. But before long the action is heightened by Felton’s cinematic keyboard cadence and his flurry of fluxed chords, while Wick interjects perceptive high notes which carry the melody, and offers a flitting trumpet that ripples above Carpio’s animated snare drums and his rhythmic coloring. Another fine piano/trumpet interaction occurs on Felton’s melodic and solemn “Lonely Toad,” a thoughtfully disconsolate discourse. Everyone exerts a gossamer quality: Wick supplies the album’s most beautiful trumpet inflections, while Carpio’s gentle percussion wafts underneath.
Felton’s compositional aptitude also strongly augments the longest component, “Susan Styra” a twelve-minute piece that moves in nearly every direction, and begins with a brisk, spherical melody, while Wick’s lyrical trumpet widens lengthwise as Felton unveils stately keyboard changes. Near the halfway point, Carpio takes an expansive drum solo, and prods insistently on his cymbals and toms. When Wick and Felton reenter, the tune is translated ingeniously into a strange kind of swinging modern jazz. The elaborate arrangement is doubtlessly one of the compact disc’s more memorable moments.
Wick was born and raised in Chicago, and his writing reflects the distant, wide open spaces of his native Midwest. He states he rarely tells stories with his songs. He prefers to create a tangible autobiographical feeling, evidenced during the suggestive “Recent Events” – which Wick says depicts a bad time he went through while in Amsterdam. Whatever happened, it must have left a persuasive impact, since the tune is punctuated by several significant stops that occur between Felton’s accented and unearthly, lower-register piano accompaniments and Wick’s bustling trumpet playing. “Symptoms” has a clockwork calmness that is almost spiritual. There is a zealous moderation and wind down, even when Carpio’s percussive parts form a modulating pressure that threatens to boil over. Wick’s pensive “The Fisherman’s Song” is highlighted by his sobering foghorn-like solo trumpet dialogue. Felton subtly glides in with some forlorn piano that echoes Wick’s contemplative flavoring, followed by Carpio’s understated percussive efforts.
White Rocket demonstrates compelling proof of open-minded musical designs at work. Greg Felton, Sean Carpio, and Jacob Wick are incisive and purposeful, and have devised music that captures the essence of their improvisational and imaginative game plan.
TrackList:
1. Mutatis Mutandis
2. His Story
3. Recent Events
4. Hone
5. Lonely Toad
6. Susan Styra
7. Symptoms
8. Sung Once
9. The Fisherman’s Song
— Doug Simpson
