Monday, September 24, 2012

George Lesiw - Clarity


Well, you can take George Lesiw's album title literally. Clarity is an instrumental jazz-rock venture released this summer, and with it Lesiw delivers an intentional and open-faced jam sandwich. It also comes across as a carefully structured collaboration with his studio instrumentalists. His guitar work floats over the top of a steady rhythmic core, which is expanded by the crazy percussive score.



And I mean crazy, at times-- as a layman, I ended up on Wikipedia investigating the classification system of percussive instruments, just trying to isolate out the individual elements I was hearing. So, if the ole Wikipedia serves right, it seems that Lesiw's written in a lot of idiophonic percussive elements throughout Clarity. The end result feels a bit ethereal, almost as though these sounds were inevitable products of the album's mood. Like they were always meant to be there.


Breaking down the songs, stepping behind the screen of relaxation, we can see the Wizard of Oz here has a strong mastery over pacing and a strong general control over the resulting mood and feel of his music. This is music that dads can groove to. And the smartest kids groove to dad music too.


Clarity is available on Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/george-lesiw/sets/clarity/


George Lesiw's CD release party will be at Cafe 9 on 9/28.

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